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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Google is providing information on people's searches to the US government -- about everyone, not just about specific people for whom the government gets search warrants.
Repression under China: the full story of the Chinese attack on fleeing Tibetans.
Amnesty International reports on bloggers
imprisoned by various
governments for their political views.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Greg Palast teaches Americans to recognize situations where the right thing to do is "cut and run".
Cheney explicitly endorsed a form of torture.
NBC rejected TV ads for Dixie Chicks film because it criticizes Bush.
NATO forces killed dozens of civilians in Afghan attack. NATO 3~claims they were mostly Taliban fighters, but the evidence suggests that is not true.
No people like to see their compatriots killed by foreigners; they only way this won't make them hate those foreigners is if they greatly appreciate those foreigners' help. In Afghanistan, public opinion is already moving towards the Taliban; the kind of public support that would lead the public to stand for this is already lost. Trying to deny what happened only makes its effect worse, since it adds lying to the list of crimes.
Computerized voting is not just vulnerable to cracking,
it's fundamentally unreliable. And, even worse, voter-verified paper
ballots have a serious practical problem: voters don't check them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps voter education will suffice to make voter-verified paper ballots work. But it does seem that the idea of using computers for voting is a bad idea.
When memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus took the stand in Scooter Libby's trial to testify to the fallibility of human memory, prosecutor Fitzgerald embarrassed her by demonstrating her failures of memory.
Does that weaken her testimony, or support it?
Bush has announced a plan to withdraw most of the Americans from the Bush forces, and have the "Iraqi" army take over most of the fighting to maintain the occupation of Iraq.
The plan is contingent on their being capable of doing so, which seems unlikely. So I think Bush's intention is to mislead Americans into expecting that he will withdraw the troops, while preparing the excuse for not actually doing so.
Some European countries are banning the wearing of veils.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Several issues of freedom come into this on different sides. On one side, there is the general freedom to dress as you wish. On the other, there is freedom from intimidation and pressure to bow down to religious bullying.
However, I am disturbed by the demand that "people in public be identifiable", because this is part of the basis for the total surveillance state that is gradually being assembled.
In the UK, vast majorities condemn the war in Iraq, while 60% now call for pulling the UK's contingent out of the Bush forces.
Deregulation of electricity, which was pushed by Enron and then exploited
by Enron, has been a disaster,
and Bush is trying to perpetuate it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Higher electricity prices are not in themselves a bad thing as long as these prices don't go for windfall profits. The US should tax electricity more, to raise prices and thus encourage conservation.
The government of Syria has crushed the movement for human rights and democracy by pointing to Iraq as an example to prove they are bad. This weekened the movement to the point where Assad felt comfortable crushing it.
Poor Syrians -- they made the fundamental mistake of believing Bush. He said that his conquest of Iraq was a plan to establish freedom and democracy there, intending to fool the American public, and ironically fooled the Syrian public too.
Let no one make the mistake of judging freedom or democracy by the conduct of the US today.
A British man faces execution under Pakistan's system of Islamic courts, after a secular court concluded that the police were framing him for murder.
"Islamic law" is another name for cruelty and injustice which are not entitled to hide behind religious freedom.
Nicaragua has adopted a law banning abortions even at the cost of killing a woman. Around 400 women per year are expected to be killed by this.
Islam is not the only religion that kills.
The money spent by Bush on "reconstructing Iraq", what part was not
siphoned off by business executives, was mostly spent on housing
foreign workers,
leaving little funds for actual rebuilding.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Such inefficiency is almost inevitable when occupying forces try to "rebuild" a country whose population hates them. In this way, as in other ways, Iraq would be better off today under the well-organized and stable despotism of Saddam Hussein than under the more violent yet less stable despotism of King George.
US houses are getting more energy-efficient -- for their size. But they are also getting bigger, which overwhelms the efficiency gains.
In Colombia under Bush's deputy Uribe, union organizers, teachers and student leaders face indefinite imprisonment and assassination.
Former
Coca Cola workers in Venezuela are blockading the plants,
demanding pay they are owed. If the company does not pay them
it may be expropriated.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
A British man who helped his wife commit suicide was given a suspended sentence.
To help others escape from a life of torture should not be punished at all.
A UK minister has admitted that the occupation of Iraq has spurred Islamic radicalism. He claims that this admission is an attempt to "reach out" to young Muslims.
He needs to realize that just admitting a mistake is not sufficient for forgiveness. You have to at least try your best not to keep making the mistake. Otherwise the "admission" is just manipulation.
Hezbollah used cluster bombs too.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
Maybe Israel and Hezbollah can sign a treaty not to use them.
Commentary: as Bush continues the war just so that the retreat from
Iraq will be the next president's "responsibility", the Democratic
party offers nothing better.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon.
The UK is accused of blocking negotiations to ban cluster bombs.
If that is true, it is probably obeying orders from the US, which is among the principal makers of cluster bombs.
Watch out: European countries are planning to use the Galileo location system to track everyone's car.
There is absolutely no need for "road pricing", because the increase in gasoline taxes--and improved mass transit--that we must implement in order to prevent global disaster should suffice to end congestion in cities too.
Half the civilian deaths in Iraq are
due to a shortage of doctors and
medical supplies. This shortage is due to the violence and
destruction caused by the Bush invasion.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The US has won more supporters than Venezuela in a
contest for a
security council seat, demonstrating that it has more influence over
other countries than Venezuela has.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I find it encouraging that as many as 77 countries openly oppose US pressure.
Osama bin Laden continues to campaign for the Republican Party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's Iraqi government is trying to keep civilian death figures secret. This is the standard Bush regime response to embarrassing failure, just as it was the standard Soviet response.
The article is misleading when it describes the Iraq Body Count as an "estimate" of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq. That project counts deaths in specific reported incidents, and explicitly says that this is not an attempt to estimate the total.
This misrepresentation, which I have seen in other mainstream media articles as well, has the effect of creating a false impression that Iraq Body Count constitutes evidence against higher figures which really do try to estimate the total number of civilian deaths, thus falsely discrediting them.
B'liar's government wants to make it easier to block
freedom-of-information requests, using processing costs as an excuse.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The costs of handing these requests are insignificant compared with the costs of the wrongdoing that transparency can prevent.
When the Social Democratic Party was in power in Germany, it adopted right-wing economic "reforms" that have spread poverty.
This is a consequence of the competition between countries to attract businesses. Instead of "free trade" treaties, countries should sign treaties where they all commit to similar measures to reduce poverty, protect the environment, and protect public health, thus preventing business from playing each country against the rest. (This is essentially the idea of the Simultaneous Policy campaign.)
As part of the War on Integrity, Bush placed a mining company manager
in charge of mine safety.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
Most of the auditors working for the US House of Representatives to investigate fraud in spending Hurricane Katrina relief funds have been fired.
The Bush forces are so desperately short of men that they have to
deploy soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces have failed to end the sectarian violence in Baghdad.
(They cannot do so, because the causes of this violence are a
structural result of their own intervention.) Bush made the
surprising admission that the situation resembles the quagmire of
Vietnam.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The more the Bush forces get worn down, the harder it will be for Bush to try to conquer some other country. Thus, the Iraqi resistance is keeping other countries safe from invasion.
It is also the case that this damages the US capability to defend against a hypothetical attack. But the US is much more likely to attack other countries than to be attacked; therefore, on the balance, its weakness is a good thing.
Henry Porter's speech: how Bliar has masterminded the greatest attack on liberty (in the UK) in the last hundred years.
Support the campaign to pressure Target to stop selling PVC.
Richard Armitage, Bush regime official until 2005, now effectively admits defeat in Iraq, and the nasty attitude that the Bush regime has shown the rest of the world.
Bush has neglected to upgrade the US electric power net as
demand for electricity surges.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I think taxes should be increased on electric consumption, to encourage conservation. This will help reduce global warming as well as avoiding the need for blackouts.
The coral reefs of Madagascar have been mostly denuded of live coral. It is probably caused by global warming. Some corals can survive at today's elevanted temperatures, but given another degree or two, they might die also.
The
US secret service pulled a student out of class to interrogate her
at school about an art project.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Legionnaires' disease is
spreading due to global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Another signal admission from a UK military commander: that the invasion of Iraq put Afghanistan on the path to being lost to the Taliban.
A US citizen who was kidnaped in Iraq, along with Romanian journalists that he was accompanying, faces execution for supposedly aiding the kidnaping. There is apparently no evidence that he participated in the crime, but Bush wants him dead anyway, and some Bush forces agent went to his trial where he falsely claimed to represent the Romanian government.
Fires and the worst drought in 100 years wake Australia up to the reality of climate change.
Drought like this will be common world-wide if we do not reduce CO2 emissions.
The UK plans for increased air travel
even as it claims to be
planning to cut CO2 emissions, but that is impossible.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
UK ministers personally cause lots of wasteful CO2 emission
by flying when they could have taken the train.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
As recognition of growing defeat in Iraq spreads among the public and
in the US and UK governments,
Bush and Bliar still refuse to
admit any doubt that they are winning. They are extreme liars,
whose approach to inconvenient facts is to deny them and hope their
denial is louder than the reality.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Baker may be heading for a solution along the lines of what I have proposed.
Some Indian states have passed laws abolishing religious freedom to stop Dalits from converting to Buddhism. They are following the example of Dr. Ambedkar, their great leader, who converted to Buddhism 50 years ago.
The more I read about Dr. Ambedkar, the more I admire him. He promulgated a rationalist variant of Buddhism, which Buddhism in India (by Gail Omvedt) suggests may be what the Buddha actually taught, before superstition seeped in to it from mainstream Indian thought.
A wise suggestion to the UK (and everywhere else): raise taxes on airline tickets, to prevent an increase in air travel.
This will also avoid the need for lots of expensive airport construction.
Sgt Clousing
explains why his conscience forced him to desert from
the Bush Forces. He now faces a court martial, for the sake
of his self respect.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
For more information see here
Orhan Pamuk, who was prosecuted by Turkey for talking about the genocide of the Armenians, received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The French law making it a crime to deny the genocide of the Armenians may be well intentioned, but it is censorship, and I will not condone it merely because I disagree with the views being censored. To deny the genocide of the Armenians damages human rights, but censorship of such views damages them even more.
Bolivia's deposed president is
allowed to live in the US, while those
who want him to face justice are denied entry.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Is Humanity wise enough to invest 1.6 trillion dollars per year now,
to avoid 6 trillion dollars per year in losses due to global warming
a few decades from now?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Bush wants to send 9 Guantanamo prisoners back to the UK, but only if they are kept under permanent surveillance and restrictions. The UK objects to that requirement, saying there isn't evidence against these prisoners to justify it.
From this information, I cannot be sure whether either of the two countries' positions is honest or an excuse. But the UK position shows some signs of being an excuse.
Bliar has already twice adopted policies of imposing restrictions without trial on foreigners legally resident in the UK, first actual imprisonment, then a severe form of house arrest, and he gives the police 101% support when they shoot and even kill people who are then determined to be totally innocent, so I can't believe he would object to putting 9 more people under house arrest even if he is sure they did nothing to justify it. He launched a war that has killed hundreds of thousands just to please Bush, so why wouldn't he arrest (or kill) 9 more people to please Bush?
See these previous notes:
101% support
House Arrest
600,000 killed in Iraq.
It appears that most of the prisoners in Guantanamo are not guilty of any crime. That is why Bush doesn't want them to have their day in court.
Here is information about these prisoners.
One of them claims to have made a false confession because he was afraid his injured leg would be untreated and he would lose it. It is to America's terrible shame that it has acted in such a way as to make such accusations entirely credible. False confessions are quite common even among ordinary criminal suspects in ordinary jails, so this should not be treated as implausible.
See this previous note about false confessions.
An Irish jury found five anti-war protestors not guilty
of attacking a US airplane.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Here's what these activists have to say about their future plans.
The TSA is not very competent (see other link), but it is
doing
a great job of protecting us from 4-year-old terrorists.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
I suspect that the name "Sam Adams" was put on the no-fly list by the previous King George, who considered him subversive, and has not been removed since.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law was adopted to prevent corporate executives
from swindling stockholders.
Executives are lobbying to get rid of
the law. I guess they want to lie to their investors once more.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
They are making the usual shallow argument about competing with other countries. In this case, they must be competing to be the country that allows the most lying to investors.
Whenever business makes such an argument, it is an instance of the harm that "free trade" policies do. By allowing businesses to move too easily from country to country, they also put business in the position to make countries compete for who can bow down the most. The proper conclusion to draw is that we must put limits on capital migration, limit "free trade", until business no longer has the power to do that.
Salman Rushdie says that
Islamic fanatics are crushing the
tolerant form of Islam that he grew up with, and that their
aim is to impose an Islamic state on the whole world.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I believe there is a hard core that wants this, but if the US stops imposing dictatorships and occupation on the Islamic world, I am sure that hard core will get a lot less support for aggressive activities.
Not In Our Name calls for
teach-ins about the Bush regime across the
US on Oct 26-30. Contact them if you want to organize one.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The UK plans a patently unjust policy of punishing drivers
if they used marijuana days previously.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Constable Hughes misrepresents the plan when he talks about punishing drivers for being "under the influence" of an illegal drug. If they really did that, it would be legitimate.
Israeli air attacks have tested a new US weapon
that kills within a smaller radius than ordinary
explosives, using toxic metal.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps they hope that this weapon will reduce the number of bystanders that they kill with these raids. However, it won't avoid killing family members traveling in the car with the target that they ought to have arrested instead.
Meanwhile, the weapon is reported to leave a carcinigenic residue. So it could kill a larger number bystanders, but they will be "deniable".
The Palestinians of Al Khader, blocked by Israeli checkpoints from
selling their grapes, held a protest --
giving the grapes away to
passing cars. For this, the army attacked them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Israel
blocks Palestinians from traveling for medical care,
and uses the threat to block them as a way to recruit informers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The army also arrests and attacks journalists, then lies
to construct an excuse.
They fear the truth.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
One Palestinian's
tale of torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The more Arabs become willing to talk peace with Israel,
the more
Israel imposes preconditions to make sure no negotiations occur.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The UK foreign minister criticized the Guantanamo prison; even sycophantic regimes have trouble swallowing it.
Anna Politkovskaya's last, unfinished article describes how the Russian government tortures Chechens to make them confess to supposed "terrorism".
It sounds like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
China is trying to silence the climbers who saw Chinese troops
shoot Tibetans.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
16 Afghans were released from Guantanamo. It took four years for King
George's men to determine that
there was never any reason to arrest
them. One of them says that nearly all the prisoners there are
innocent, and that torture continues.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Imprisonment of the innocent is a regular, normal result of imprisoning people without a real, fair trial.
Bush forces casualties are at the
highest level since they destroyed
the city of Fallujah, as resistance attacks continue to increase.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
When asked about her fondest wish, if Democrats take control of Congress, Nancy Pelosi mentioned only side issues. Nothing about ending the occupation of Iraq. Nothing about restoring the Bill of Rights. Nothing about making the US a nation that really does not torture.
The things she proposes to do are good, but they won't stop the US from being a force for evil in the world.
The UK security service appears to spin the evidence that it secretly
presents in deportation hearings.
It tried to spin the same evidence
in two contradictory ways in two deportation hearings, and through
good luck, it was caught out.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Since the odds of getting caught are small, such spinning must be quite common. It is the spinning, not the getting caught, that is wrong.
Bliar's probable successor, Gordon Brown,
appears to be more of the
same "war on terror" (war on civil liberties).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
It is absurd to suggest that Europe avoid being anti-American, because that is impossible. The principal enemy of the US ideals of freedom and democracy is the US government; to support either one is to oppose the other. Whichever side you're on, you're anti-American in some sense.
Europeans should take the side of freedom and democracy, which means opposing the US government until it is no longer in a position to do harm in the world.
A Nato commander warned that Afghanistan may "swing to the Taliban" in six months.
An airport in Europe has a test program: requiring all passengers to wear RFID tags.
Here is more information about the system. It is designed to treat people like sheep.
This system must be superfluous for security, since the existing systems are supposed to prevent passengers from going where they are not supposed to go. In other words, this system doesn't make sense in its own terms.
To track people inside an airport is not particularly dangerous to civil liberties, since people are required to identify themselves just to get in. The danger I see is that this will get people accustomed to being treated like sheep (even more than existing airport security does), paving the way for the universal total surveillance that the Bush and Bliar regimes clearly want.
Rep. Foley wanted to retire (by not running for reelection) and become
a lobbyist -- a common practice which is a form of corruption. But
Karl Rove pressured him to run again, saying he would have "more
success as a lobbyist" if he did so. For officials to offer someone
"more success as a lobbyist" is also corruption.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I've written a new song parody: Guantanamero.
1/5 of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in the US are at least
partly disabled.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Philosophy professor Robert Redeker published an article warning of a
campaign of intimidation subjecting Europe to Islamic demands. This
angered Islamic fanatics, who want to kill him; his cowardly newspaper
Le Figaro apologized for the article (shame on them!). Here's a
translation of the article.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Redeker didn't insult Muslims, or make fun of their religion (though people have a right to do either of those things). Instead he addressed real issues of Islam seriously and directly. The events following the publication of his essay demonstrate the truth of his accusations about Islam's behavior today.
I do not entirely agree with Redeker; I think he excuses Christianity too much. Christian fanatics continue to attack the use of contraception as well as scientific knowledge and research. But that is a side issue.
The head of the British Army says that the presence of UK troops in Iraq as part of the Bush forces makes things worse -- in Iraq and elsewhere.
Bush congratulated the Iraqis for being "willing to tolerate" a high level of violence to be free.
He's right: the strength of the Iraqi resistance shows that Iraqis are willing to use violence to free themselves from the violent occupation of the invader. But I didn't expect Bush to congratulate them for this.
A play made from the diaries of Rachel Corrie
was not presented in New York City due to intimidation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
And then again in a school in Miami.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
However, a different group in New York City has more courage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
It is not yet certain whether North Korea really
tried to explode a nuclear bomb, or, if so, whether it worked.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
In New Zealand, Ahmed Zaoui was imprisoned as a terrorist suspect. However, he has since received bail, and will have a court hearing to determine whether he should remain in New Zealand.
This makes a good contrast with the arbitrary imprisonment that the US practices and that the UK has tried to practice.
Inequality Without Growth, Pain Without Gain.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
More cartoons about Mohammad have provoked more protests from Muslims who believe they are entitled to silence disapproval of their religion.
Anyone who tries to silence a critical opinion deserves to be buried under a heap of mocking cartoons. If people publish enough cartoons mocking Islam, eventually Muslims will learn to live with it.
Many leading scientists have denounced the Bush regime for trying to gag and distort science.
Contrast the current US policy of imprisonment without trial
with the US policy after World War II that
even Nazi leaders
had to get a fair trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's anti-labor NLRB has arranged to
deny millions of Americans the
right to belong to unions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The world's rivers and aquifers are already starting to run dry...and if we don't cut down carbon emission, it will get much worse.
A new scientific study estimates that Bush has killed 600,000 Iraqis.
Bush is a parallel killer, much worse than a serial killer. What must we do to prevent him from killing again?
The article is inaccurate when it says that Iraq Body Count estimates the number of civilians killed in Iraq. It reports the bodies that it counts, without trying to estimate how many others there may be.
The
principal journalistic critic of Putin was assassinated on
Putin's birthday.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
The Bliar regime is accused of holding back information about the killing of journalist Terry Lloyd, just as the Bush forces held back information from him which could have prevented his death.
Odious debt is a term for borrowing done by oppressive governments,
imposing repayment burdens that can last decades afterward. Now
there is a movement to
hold the lenders responsible for encouraging these borrowers, arguing that
they own the people all that they "repayed".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The US Navy defense lawyer who defended a Guantanamo prisoner all the way to the Supreme Court (and won there) has been forced into retirement. They say this isn't a punishment, but it will surely make other Navy defense lawyers hesitate to do a good job.
Videojournalist Imad Bornat was arrested and wounded by Israeli police
while he was covering the regular Bil'in protest. The police then lied
to justify it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Robert Fisk explains how Islamic terrorism is the natural result of
decades of systematic Western violence, duplicity and oppression
across the Muslim world.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The West now uses the response, terrorism, to justify continuation of the stimulus that provoked and provokes it-- as well as for denying the freedom of its own people.
Using Trident missiles to carry non-nuclear warheads could trigger an accidental nuclear war.
Humanity is using up its natural capital by consuming resources 23%
faster than the Earth generates them. This cannot go on for long --
if we don't cut down intentionally, resources we depend on will
disappear, with fatal results.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Human encroachment on elephant society --
including killing most of the
older elephants -- is driving them crazy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime wants to make ISPs keep information about their customers. This will make it easier to track down anyone that the regime does not like.
"Child pornography" is one of the favorite excuses for many kinds of surveillance and control measures that attack everyone's human rights.
The statement that this would "keep the information in the companies' hands" is deceptive, given the laws that allow the police to collect such information en masse with hardly any limits. The phrase "other lawful process" is designed to slip this past you without your realizing what it really means.
Israeli "settlers"
took advantage of the recent war as a cover to
convert new settlement "outposts" into real settlements. These are
ostensibly illegal, but in fact the government supports them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's many forms of attack on Palestinians make
more sense
in terms of strategy than in terms of the good faith that
most Western commentators presume.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The
tense circumstances created by Israel's policies have driven
Palestinians into fighting each other. Is that an accident, or
a plan?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
In the past, Syria demanded preconditions to negotiate with Israel.
Now that Syria makes no preconditions, Israel has added some.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Chinese troops shot and killed unarmed Tibetans trying to flee Tibet.
9/11 widows blast Bush administration for covering up their responses to advance warnings about the 9/11 attacks.
Arms manufacturers are trampling export laws by selling parts separately to embargoed countries.
Mexican troops seem to be preparing to attack the protestors in Oaxaca who have driven out their corrupt governor.
The March to War:
Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern
Mediterranean.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The last few thousand wild tigers are being killed to sell to superstitious Chinese. Laws against poaching are doing no good, because they are not enforced.
Perhaps what is needed is to spread a rumor in China that eating tiger makes men impotent.
A lawsuit by the Sierra Club made the Defense Department stop blocking wind power development in the US.
I think the most interesting point here is the narrowminded and misplaced focus: protecting Americans from hypothetical attacking airplanes by leaving everyone vulnerable to drought, plagues, and inundation.
The US Navy is sending ships out of port, just
as it would if it were
preparing to attack Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The US support for terrorism, its manifest desire to control some of the world's richest oil regions, its contempt for human rights and its disrespect for democracy all support the conclusion that the US should not have nuclear weapons.
Forecast for 2100: desert! If your land isn't submerged by the rising
sea,
it is likely to be bone-dry.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Republican voters think torture is ok but inviting someone to have sex is horrible. And yet sex is one of the Bush regime's approved tortures: used in Abu Ghraib, and now legalized by Congress. If torture is sex, does that make it wrong?
It is normal for humans of age 16 to have sex, and normal for other sexually mature humans to find them attractive. There's nothing wrong with Foley for that. What Foley did may have been wrong for a different reason--if the pages felt they didn't dare say no to him because of his position. (You may know whether this was the case; I don't, because I mostly ignore sex scandals.)
In Nigeria and Chad, as oil is pumped out for the great profits of the oil companies, most people live in grinding poverty and get none of the wealth of the oil. The governments are corrupt, and the oil companies help corrupt them.
Ten Reasons You Will Not Recognize America in Ten Years
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I used to consider such articles to be wild projections, but very little of this one is projection -- nearly all of the article is about past events already documented. It is a good summary of many reasons why the United States is today's evil empire, just as the Soviet Union once was.
The Christian fanatics' bill to make it nearly impossible for teens to
go to another state for an abortion was blocked in the Senate, thanks to public pressure.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Amy Goodman interviews Senator Leahy about the guilt-by-fiat law.
An entire Baghdad police brigade was demobbed for "allowing sectarian death squads to move freely."
I suspect that is an understatement. It is well known that the Iraqi death squads which "dress in police uniforms" are really police. I suspect that the death squads that this brigade "allowed" to move freely are part of the brigade.
I also think this action, being just a tiny part of what the Bush forces would have to do to make their rule legitimate, won't alter anything -- not even the prevalence of death squads in the police.
Green Party candidates including Rep. Stensenbrenner's opponent were among those arrested at a peace demonstration outside his office.
How the guilty-by-assumption prisoners bill shreds human rights, rule of law, and the US constitution.
The US already
holds 14,000 prisoners with no rights, and there is
nothing now to stop it from reaching 100,000.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
At least this makes the situation simpler. The United States is an evil empire of torture, the enemy of human rights all across the world. The question of whether it has any redeeming qualities is irrelevant now.
The Australian government scheduled a "review" of its laws that criminalize dissent in a loose way. When the panel called them too broad, the government disregarded it.
Australia has essentially abolished human rights, just as the US would later do.
According to Woodward, Saudi Arabia has promised to lower oil prices for the election, hoping that shallow-minded Americans will vote based on the gasoline price on election day.
In states where judges are elected, campaign contributors buy court
decisions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Global warming is causing ecological changes that are destroying
northern forests. This contributes to further global warming,
raising the threat of runaway warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
As part of the War on the Environment, the
Bush regime has blocked
NOAA scientists from speaking to the public about global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
As part of the War on Integrity, officials deny having gagged the scientists, but there is proof.
Massive amounts
toxic waste from Europe is disposed of in Africa,
where the governments are corrupt or nonexistent, and it kills people.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Government
thugs handcuffed children and killed the family dog during
a $60 marijuana raid.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The police response is essentially a rejection of all ethical responsibility for their actions: "No matter what we do, it is never our fault, always that of people who break laws." (This also presumes that breaking laws is wrong.)
Boycotts of Israeli institutions are spreading. These boycotts demand that Israel obey international law.
The Israeli peace group B'tselem accused the Israeli government
of war crimes for its attack on the Gaza electric plant.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
The flimsy justification that the government offers would be equally valid as an excuse for rocket attacks against major Israeli cities. They too contain civil infrastructure that supports military activity.
Green Party candidates were arrested in a protest in Wisconsin.
The Revolt of the [Retired] Generals.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Two witnesses confirm that Diebold secretly patched voting machine
software just before the 2002 election, whose existence Diebold
formerly denied. The Georgia secretary of state seems to be
persuing the matter lackdaisically.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
6 in 10 Iraqis are in favor of attacking the Bush forces. 4/5 share
my view that the Bush forces provoke violence more than they prevent it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The HP spying scandal is a tiny part of the Big Brother
corporate-state nexus.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Reporter Brenda Norrell was fired by Indian Country Today
because she complained about the important stories they refused to
cover -- or covered one-sidedly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, higher-profile newspapers do such things too. But their reporters are rarely ready to complain in public.
Safia Amajan, Afghan women's rights campaigner, was shot on the street by the Taliban. The government had denied her a bodyguard, so she went on with her work.
Civil war is raging in Iraq's Diyala province, and the Sunnis are winning overall, despite the presence of a Shi'ite "Iraqi" division that opposes them. They are forcing Kurds and Shi'ites into exile, and setting up an oppressive Islamist regime.
I'm sure many Sunnis don't like that regime, but they must feel compelled to support it because the only choice is to be massacred by Shi'ites.
The bill for imprisonment without trial of foreign prisoners makes it
a crime to rape or torture them -- but it has a narrow definition of
rape, and a narrow definition of torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's War on the Environment suffered a setback: a court ruled against his attempt to open up large forest areas for logging.
However, he avoided another setback, as the EPA rejected calls from its own scientists (and public health organizations) to substantially reduce particulate pollution.
Colombian senator Gustavo Petro says the army killed 100 civilians in recent years, to present them to the press as "guerrillas who were killed in battle".
English auto-translation.
The UN condemns a Swiss vote to detain failed asylum-seekers.
International accords on the right of asylum were adopted after to World War II, during which many civilians were killed by the Nazis after other countries refused to allow them in. It appears to me that the world is moving back to that.
The National Book Festival sounds like a nice thing, but it is a
"public/private partnership", which means that it benefits from
government sponsorship while the private parties maintain effective
control. These private parties include Laura Bush. As a result, it
is limited to politically safe books.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
A number of CIA and other US officials condemn the Republican torture plans. And, hooray to them, they put moral issues first.
The European Commission demands that Luxemburg cease its subsidy for
renewable electric power generation, saying that this "distorts the
market". This is a sick idea of priorities.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Foods and cosmetics contain nanomaterials, but there has been very little
study of whether they are safe.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
One or two more degrees Centigrade of global warming will make the Earth
as hot as it was 3 million years ago. Back then, sea level was 80 feet higher,
and it is likely to end up that way again sooner or later.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Newsweek's cover story this week was supposed to be "Losing
Afghanistan", but they didn't dare show Americans such bad news, so
they put a puff piece on the cover instead. I don't know whether the
article ran in the magazine, but
here it is.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Congressman Kucinich warns that
Bush might launch a war against Iran in October.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I previously wrote that this was a danger of a nuclear war, but a reader pointed out that the bunker-busters Kucinich mentioned could be non-nuclear. However, others in the past have pointed to US government decisions that seemed to lean towards using nuclear weapons to attack Iran. A nuclear attack is conceivable, but so is a non-nuclear attack.
US citizens: support the Let America Vote Act, which would require all voters to be given the option of paper ballots.
A Republican general retired so he can condemn the Bush regime's
approach to the war in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The article uses Rumsfeld as a scapegoat for his superiors, and refuse to entertain any doubt about the legitimacy of invading Iraq. Nonetheless it is interesting for what it does say.
US citizens: call your senators and tell them to vote against the bill that would stop prisoners from going to court if they are tortured--or if they are innocent.
Please call again even if you have called before.
Bush was warned by the CIA before invading Iraq that this would boost
Islamic radicals. CIA's recently-retired top expert on radical
islamists says the occupation of Iraq is "part of the problem".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The IRS is investigating a Liberal church for a guest preacher's
sermon which talked about Bush and Kerry.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
The sermon certainly criticized Bush; judging from this article, I think it criticized Kerry too (though I can't be sure of that). If that is true, then it appears the sermon didn't really endorse or oppose a specific candidate-- which would suggest that the IRS is applying a double standard.
Can anyone verify what the sermon actually said about Bush and Kerry?
Western garbage is exported to Africa and burnt in incinerators,
sometimes poisoning thousands of people at a time.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
In Baghdad, people pass wounded men lying on the street and don't dare try to help them.
Poor Maya farmers in Guatemala have occupied the land
of a foreign-owned nickel mine, demanding farmland. The mine has caused
deforestation and environmental damage that affects the neighboring
communities, which (of course) have not been properly compensated,
because the ruling elite supports foreign corporations against poor
citizens.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Glaciers in Alaska are shrinking-- faster than previously believed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Now the US congress is starting to look for ways to give lip service
to reduction of global warming, as long as it doesn't involve any
real inconvenience.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Brazilian plans to expand
biofuel production threaten the rain forest:
it will be cut down to expand farms.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Charges of "denigrating Turkey" were dropped against novelist Elif
Shafak, one of whose fictional characters mentioned the genocide of
the Armenians, but the law remains on the books and writers keep
facing such accusations.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
Bush and senate Republicans have agreed on details of torture rules, in a bill intended to deny prisoners the right of habias corpus.
This article explains more.
Without the right of habias corpus, there will be nothing to restrain the Bush regime from imprisoning people based on fabricated evidence, evidence obtained by torture, or no evidence at all. When prisoners cannot talk to a lawyer, their guards can often get away with torturing them even if it is ostensibly illegal.
Here's an example, made possible by the lack of habias corpus in Bagram air base.
Why do the Republicans do this? They must hate our freedoms.
The government of Germany is under pressure to demand the arrest
of CIA agents accused of kidnaping a German.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
I don't think this is enough to teach the US government a lesson. Germany should order all US troops out of Germany promptly, and announce that it will downgrade diplomatic relations with the US if anything like this happens again.
The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" to demand it cease supporting the Taliban.
It may have been justified, as a way to end Pakistan's military support for Islamic extremism.
A trial in the UK illustrates Bliar's abolition of another of the human rights for which the UK was famous: the right to remain silent without prejudice. Now the judge encourages juries to infer, from a refusal to give evidence, that the suspect is guilty.
Several European countries are systematically fingerprinting children. Some are starting to organize resistance in their schools.
Bush, having worn down the army, is now
wearing down the National Guard. Thus, Iraq is protecting other countries
from invasion.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
This also has the unfortunate potential effect of preventing intervention where intervention would be called for on humanitarian grounds, such as Darfur. In practice, though, this makes no difference; Bush would never support intervention for such reasons.
See the report of the
Bush Crimes Commission.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
California has sued car manufactures over the harm done by exhaust
including CO2.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Blair's minister for surveillance and control gave a speech
asking
British Muslims to spy on each other for the government. He was
roundly rebuked.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
What decent person would want to report the apparently suspicious act of his neighbor, when this might result in said neighbor's being raided and shot in the middle of the night, and then charged with some other offense when he turned out to be no terrorist?
The only way British Muslims will try to suppress extremism is if they feel that Islamist extremists are wrong, the British government is right, and that non-terrorists who are erroneously suspected will be treated justly. Blair's policies make this impossible. They alienate non-radical Muslims, even as they promote the extremism that reflects Blair's own contempt for our freedoms.
Manuel Bravo, imprisoned and facing deportation with his son from the UK, committed suicide so his son would not be deported.
Bravo was from a political opposition family, and feared he and his son would be tortured if sent back to Angola. Despite this, the UK rejected his plea for asylum. The Bliar regime is trying all sorts of measures to reduce the number of people who get political asylum in the UK, and this includes randomly rejecting valid requests when they can.
Hugo Chavez's Address to UN: After Bush speaks, it smells of sulfur.
Greg Palast interviews Hugo Chavez.
The Bush Department of Education illegally pressured states to adopt
reading textbooks published by Bush cronies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
20% of Iraqi children don't go to school, for fear of violence, and teachers are fleeing.
Previously secret US court complaints describe the continuing torture of prisoners in Guantanamo. (The specific descriptions are the crucial parts.)
Bush forces soldiers called torture their "choir"--
a choir of Iraqis moaning in pain.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
A British soldier in the Bush forces has plead guilty to charges of torturing Iraqi prisoners.
The British Army is doing the right thing by prosecuting these brutes, but we have to remember that such crimes do not happen because these people started out as monsters. These are normal people who found themselves in a situation that brings out this side of people-- and most of the Bush forces soldiers have been influenced by this more or less. This is the predictable result of an occupation where troops regard the whole population as "the enemy".
Presidents Chavez and Ahmadinejad signed cooperation agreements
and made statements of mutual support against the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Iran's government is more or less democratic, but does not respect human rights. Dissidents have been imprisoned and newspapers closed. However, I won't criticize Chavez for making whatever alliances he can. When the US was in a war against aggression and it could not be sure of winning on its own, it made an alliance with the Soviet Union.
Torture is rampant in Iraq today, including the prisons run by the
Bush forces. It didn't end with the exposure of Abu Ghraib.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
A Canadian court ruled that there is no reason to suspect torture
victim Maher Arar of any crime or disloyalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-27 because the old link was broken.]
Arar was kidnaped by the Bush regime and sent to Syria for torture. Even if it were legitimate to torture real criminals or real terrorists, that excuse would not apply to him.
More coverage at
here.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
In the 2002 election, Diebold surreptitiously installed a patch in its voting machines in Georgia, without telling state officials, only in counties full of Democratic voters. Then Max Cleland lost the election despite polls putting him well in the lead. There were already suspicions that Diebold rigged the election, and this new information adds to the suspicion.
However, voters are fighting back against
electronic voting machine
cheating. 27 states have requirements for paper ballots. But some
states, such as Florida and Ohio, have laws designed to make election
fraud easy. To restore democracy in the US will require the Federal
government to step in and enforce the constitutional requirement that
states have democratic governments. That will require a Supreme Court
which is inclined to demand democracy in substance, not just formal
democracy as an excuse for despotism.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Although the US appeared to win the Afghan war, it let this
victory slip out of its grasp through not really trying to win
the peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
What the article does not mention is the underlying reason for this: Bush really wanted to invade Iraq instead.
BP announced a scheme to allow drivers to pay for activities to
reduce CO2 emissions and cancel out the effect of their driving.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
A weakness in this scheme is that drivers who make this contribution and then feel "Now I'm not contributing to global warming" may be led to feel it is ok to burn more gasoline.
The amount of effort needed to cancel the effect of burning gasoline is proportional to the amount you burn. So the right way to do this program would be as an alternative way to buy gas. But it shouldn't be just an alternative-- it should be the only way.
A lawsuit on behalf of
Guantanamo prisoner Shaker Aamer describes how
he has been tortured there, physically and psychologically.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
Bush was compelled to move the prisoners out of secret CIA prisons because CIA agents were afraid they would be prosecuted for breaking the law.
There were protests around the world for action to
protect the people of Darfur.
McCain's version of the bill about Guantanamo prisoners, like Bush's
version,
would strip prisoners of the right to challenge their
imprisonment in court.
If either version of the bill passes, it will be a shameful sore on
the United States of America.
Bush blocked a US congressional move to put pressure on Sudan over
Darfur.
As Spain faces decreasing rainfall due to global warming,
wasteful irrigation is rapidly draining its aquifers.
The European Union subsidizes agriculture, so a lot of this
irrigation simply isn't needed.
Human beings have a right to sufficient clean water to live; but
businesses (and non-subsistence farms qualify as businesses) should
have to pay market prices for the public's water.
Gaza: Children Killed in a War the World Doesn't Want to Know About.
Regarding the second article on this page, I think that these demands
(recognize Israel and renounce violence) are unjust when applied only
to one side. Israeli fighters commit far more violence, and Israel
effectively refuses to recognize Palestine. The world should apply
these demands to both sides. We could start by demanding both sides
renounce the various forms of indiscriminate violence that they are
accustomed to use.
Lopez Obrador, denied the recount that would have shown whether he won
Mexico's presidential election, has announced the formation of a
'parallel government'.
The US media refer to Lopez Obrador as the "defeated" candidate, using
the same word we would apply to someone who ran in an honest election
and was honestly defeated. This is misleading, to say the least,
since we don't know who really won. In context, it forms the final
stage in a common technique for misleading the public: the
This one has three stages:
the Mexican authorities ran the election improperly
(this has
been proved); the Mexican court certified the results in disregard
of this proof; finally, the media pretend that Lopez Obrador had lost a fair
contest. It is quite smooth, but it is less effective in Mexico than in the
US: millions of Mexicans are not fooled.
A senate committee rejected Bush's torture plans, to affirm the Geneva
Conventions.
However, both versions of the bill deny prisoners in prisons such as
Guantanamo
the right to go to court.
This means that any sort of abuse could flourish even if ostensibly prohibited.
A list of torture techniques that the CIA wants to use has been
published.
"Sound manipulation" is apparently a euphemism for ear-splitting noises
(which can cause permanent hearing damage as well as being painful).
Sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners painfully cold, and
forcing them to stand until it hurts, are
clearly torture. Sleep deprivation was Stalin's favorite torture technique.
Torture Is Torture: Bush's 'Program' Disgraces All Americans.
The IMF and World Bank surely chose Singapore for their meeting
because it would not allow any public protests. (Singapore is a
democracy in form but does not respect human rights.) But Singapore
went further and denied entry to some accredited participants.
The result is a scandal--just what the IMF deserves every time.
Policies that crush the poor, such as making children pay to attend
public school, are the IMF's normal work.
Southern Lebanon is losing its harvest because the fields and trees
are full of unexploded cluster bombs. Israeli fighters fired them
indiscriminately without bothering about specific targets.
Mercury pollution is
affecting every ecosystem, but it can be
reversed.
Exxon funds many organizations to spread fake science casting doubt on
global warming, including one organization originally founded to deny
the dangers of tobacco smoke.
For more information:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute and Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution were also funded by Microsoft to say repeat things about
free software and give them an undeserved veneer of respectability.
Diebold
voting machines open with the same key that opens
many hotel minibars.
The "Iraqi" government plans to dig a trench all the way around
Baghdad,
supposedly to prevent intersectarian violence.
I don't see how this would be effective, since there are both Sunnis
and Shi'ites in Baghdad.
The UK is withholding a lot of money from the World Bank to
oppose its pressure for privatization.
(I'll have to admit that the Blair regime is doing one good thing.)
US citizens: phone or write your congressman and senators to oppose
the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which would define boycotts and
protests against meat and fur companies as "terrorism". There is
no legitimate need for any part of this bill.
As part of Bush's War on the Environment, the EPA plans to close labs
and fire scientists.
Melting ice has driven polar bears onto land where they have
nothing to eat. Underweight, the females don't have enough fat to last last
through the summer. This probably means no more polar bears will be born.
Go see the last generation of polar bears now, before they are gone.
Mike Ruppert, who has presented the case for Bush regime involvement
in the 9/11 attacks, reports on the persistent government attacks on
his organization, as a result of which he has gone into exile and
called for overthrow of the US government.
I share Ruppert's view that the US government has forfeited its
legitimacy, but I cannot see any hope in the idea of a revolution.
The only Americans who might plausibly overthrow the US government are
right-wing military fanatics, and they would hardly restore the
democracy and human rights we have lost. Just as the Bush occupation
has made most Iraqis long for the days of Saddam Hussein's despotism,
which most of them hated at the time, I think that a revolution in the
US could make us long for the bydone days of the Bush regime.
The White House refused to receive the Bush Crimes Commission's report.
Arctic ice is melting faster and will disappear in a few
decades at the present rate. (But further warming could easily
speed this up.) Without ice,
the arctic will absorb more heat from the sun,
causing even more warming.
Hansen says we have 10 years to save Earth as we know it, but nobody
really knows. We might have 20 years. It could be too late already.
Uri Avnery:
Help! Peacemongers!
If peace were established between Israel and Palestine, I think the
big losers would be the religious fanatics that use the conflict to
boost their own power: Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad, and Al Qa'ida.
NATO asked for more troops for Afghanistan,
but no country offered to send more.
Charges against Greg Palast were dropped. He faced possible
imprisonment for photographing an oil refinery.
Rep. Murtha blames Rumsfeld for the US Army's decay.
Since Bush's invasion of Iraq was a crime, not merely a fumble, the
question of who is responsible for doing a bad job of it is secondary.
What is most interesting here is the response of the government
spokesman who says that it is insulting to suggest that the army has
problems.
One of the advantages democracy is supposed to provide is that
problems get discussed, and then addressed; but the Bush regime shares
the "don't you dare say there's a problem" attitude that plagued the
Soviet Union and still plagues China.
Global warming is having
effects visible around the world, and some
are looming disasters.
The Bush regime is trying to
twist intelligence to justify attacking Iran
just as four years ago it twisted intelligence to excuse the already-planned
invasion of Iraq.
Many in Gaza are now starving because Israel has closed the
borders.
After Israeli attacks destroyed the main electric generation station,
the water supply and sewage treatment don't function. This could
lead to epidemics.
The general Israeli approach towards Palestinians is to
make their
life unbearable until they flee. In other words, ethnic cleansing is
the goal. Here's an example:
When Palestinians complain to the police about settler violence, 90%
of the time
no charges are brought. And that's not counting the times
they can't get the police to take the report.
The
police also engage in gratuitous violence against Palestinians.
Do you think the guilty parties will be punished?
Israel uses Palestinian teenagers (many under 16) for slave labor
in prison. They get two meals a day.
I presume that Israel uses adults for prison slave labor too. But
this practice is not unique. Countries from the US to China have
found that prison slave labor makes it easy to imprison large numbers
of people.
A lawsuit in Colorado seeks to ban use of computerized voting machines.
Blair has banned a small "peace camp" which 10 families of soldiers
killed in Iraq wanted to set up near the Labor Party conference.
A blueprint for capping global warming (in case it isn't already too late).
Ohio approved a policy of listing people as "sex offenders"
without going through a criminal trial.
This policy of denying people their legal rights without the usual
safeguards is called a "rule" because, apparently, the legislature did
not deign even to adopt it as a law. It ought to be a no-brainer that
this is unconstitutional; but with several negative-brain Republicans
on the Supreme Court, it may not be able to do the right thing in
no-brainers.
Most Americans now join Europeans in condemning the "War on Terror".
Putting RFIDs (spy chips) into
every DVD will make it possible for
movie companies to keep track of all users (as well as tighten the
coils of digital restrictions management).
Iran
closed the leading reformist newspaper for "blasphemous articles"
and "insulting officials".
The Blair regime is
planning to promote the policeman who was in
charge of the operation that shot and killed an innocent man a year
ago.
Blair says he gives the police "101% support" for their violence
against the public.
5 former soviet republics have signed a nuclear-free treaty. The US
doesn't like this, since it wants to put nuclear weapons in some of
them.
Students demonstrated the
insecurity of Diebold voting machines by
creating a virus that can spread from machine to machine, falsify
election results, and then erase itself.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency called a US report on Iran's
nuclear program "outrageous & dishonest".
The
CIA found out in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was not friends with Al
Qa'ida,
but passed upward only reports that the administration liked to hear.
The
FCC destroyed a draft report about media concentration in 2004.
Presumably someone didn't like the conclusions.
Several states are
suing the US government to demand CO2 emission
standards for autos. (Bush, in his War on the Environment, has told
the EPA not to do this.)
Democracy Now held a confrontation between 9/11 skeptics (makers of
the video Loose Change) and defenders of the official explanation.
We can be sure that a plane hit the Pentagon because many people in
the area saw it hit. I think the theory of explosives in the WTC
buildings is plausible. It isn't proven-- but proof is too much to
demand of unofficial investigations carried out against government
interference. We must demand a thorough independent investigation,
not just of the physical questions, but also of the suspicious actions
of various government officials, the stock options, etc.
Widespread American disapproval of Bush and his war, and his theft of
our democracy,
is not turning into passionate protest.
Some of the news magazines that cover Washington
function as ways for lobbyists to print ads for members
of Congress to read.
The
Senate is considering a bill to allow essentially unlimited
warrantless wiretapping.
This bill would in effect declare the constution's prohibition of
"unreasonable searches" to be meaninglss words.
Monsanto tried to
shut down research into a possible danger from its
genetically modified crops. Meanwhile, genetically modified crops
have in fact caused various dangers.
I should point out that it is very unlikely that any given unusual
protein would cause a long-term disease. The prion protein that
causes mad cow disease is a misfolded variant of one that is normally
found in the cow brain. The proteins found in genetically engineered
plants are probably not similar to anything in animal brains. If that
were the only possible danger (which it isn't), I'd be willing to bet
on the safety of these crops; but that would in no way excuse trying
to suppress research into the possibility.
Reportedly
13 million people have formally resigned from the
Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations.
I challenge the US to match this: for 3 million Americans
(approximately the same fraction of the population)
to quit the Republican Party and its affiliated organizations.
Thanks to Blair, double jeopardy has returned to England.
The man convicted just now had confessed to murder, and appears to be
guilty. I am not sorry for him as an individual. However, it would
be folly to think that such opportunities to do good with this law
will appear frequently; in the future, criminals who are acquitted
will know in the future not to confess.
Meanwhile, the same law will enable the state to repetitively
prosecute any suspect-- guilty or innocent-- as long as "new
evidence" can be obtained or manufactured. You could spend your whole
life being repeatedly tried.
An Israeli commander, now demobilized, says that Israel dispersed over
a million cluster bomblets across Lebanon and "covered entire towns".
The Israeli government responses quoted in the article are interesting
examples of the way governments deny actions that ought to cause
outrage. We are told that Israel "obeys international laws" (the same
way the Bush regime "does not torture"), as a supposed substitute for
the facts that would enable us to determine whether that claim is
true.
Then we are told that the firing of these weapons was a "response" to
enemy fire-- which tells us nothing about what the Israeli army
actually did, only that they are willing to stretch the term
"response".
Religious fanatics in Pakistan
thwarted the attempt to reform rape
law. Women there do not dare report being raped, because the report
is likely to result in their being convicted of adultery.
This illustrates the injustice and evil of Islam. People have a right
to believe whatever they wish, but practicing it is another matter:
putting Islamic Law into practice is a crime against humanity.
Several people have been sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy.
The Israeli bombing of Lebanon has created the
biggest oil spill ever
in the Eastern Mediterranean. The oil has affected the coasts of
three countries, including a nature reserve where endangered species
live.
Professor Steven Jones has been suspended from teaching
as a reprisal for his statements about why the WTC towers
collapsed.
The university's excuses are an attempt to distract attention from the
enormity of taking reprisals against professors' political statements.
For instance, casting doubt on the certainty of his conclusions is a
red herring. Suppose he's wrong: would that justify reprisals against
his job? Certainly not!
This illustrates the threat that Bush and his supporters pose
to freedom of speech in the US. Americans must not let the
threat posed by foreign terrorists distract them from the bigger
threat posed by corrupt domestic despots.
The evidence I know of provides reason to suspect that parts of the
Bush regime participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center, but
is not sufficient for certainty. To ascertain the answer we need a
thorough and independent investigation with the power to subpoena Bush
regime officials including Cheney and Bush. Short of a proper
investigation, the best anyone can do is present evidence and
arguments that are less than conclusive. Reprisals against people who
do indicate an intent to suppress the truth.
Canada is proposing an agreement with the US that would
give the White House a
$450-million slush fund.
Journalist Greg Palast faces Federal criminal charges--for taking a
photo of an oil refinery whose exhaust pollutes the air right next to
a camp for New Orleans refugees.
These bans on photography, which have also been applied to public
places such as bus stations, are inexcusable acts of tyranny. (They
are also unlikely to hinder real terrorists, who could easily arrange
to avoid being spotted taking their photos-- but this is a secondary
issue.)
10 reasons to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games in communist China.
Oil is not the only natural fuel that is likely to peak soon. Gas,
coal, even uranium seem to be headed for this, and not too far in the
future either.
If peak uranium is likely to happen in 50 years, that is an additional
argument against building more nuclear reactors now. The main reason
is that the waste is dangerous, but anyone who suggests disregarding
that problem is likely to become less eager when he finds out that
uranium fuel will only last a few decades. Conservation and renewable
energy are what we need!
The burning oil tanks that Israel bombed sent a cloud of pollution
over Lebanon. Lebanon's environment minister says this could kill
more people than the the war did.
Israel and the US are starving Gaza, while Israeli troops maraud,
killing people and destroying houses, factories, cars, fruit trees,
and domestic animals.
If the current policy continues, it could lead to many deaths.
It could be genocide.
Don't let Nestle bottle up the
McCloud river.
A
violent right-wing intimidation campaign is crushing public dissent
in Japan.
The 1930s campaign of assassination, whose targets included the high
government officians, put the military in charge and led to World War
II in the Pacific. I don't think that today's Japanese right-wing
wants to launch a big war; the world situation is too different. But
they will itch to fight someone, until sooner or later they do.
If Japan ceases to be a free country, we will have lost half of World
War II.
Debra Sweet, US coordinator of The World Can't Wait,
explains why it is important to Drive Out the Bush Regime.
The Bush regime
did not allow the Pentagon to plan the
occupation of Iraq, telling the generals that the Bush forces
would leave immediately after conquering the country.
Bush forces Marine Alex Markey's
interview talks about his unit's
attitude toward Iraqi civilians-- and what he thinks of the phrase
"support our troops".
A woman in a vegetative state
shows signs of hearing what
people say to her, according to brain scans.
How to determine whether she is conscious? One idea is to set up a
brain scan machine to let her select letters from the alphabet under
its control. If she is conscious, and her brain damage only prevents
motor control, she can learn to spell out words this way.
UK police say that thousands of Muslims in the UK are supporting
terrorism. They don't raise the question of whether their policy of
supporting aggression in the Middle East ought to be changed.
An ethical person who encounters widespread hostility must ask
himself, "Have I done something wrong which justifies such anger
against me?" The answer is not an automatic yes; sometimes many
people are angry for bad reasons. But anyone who assumes the answer
is an automatic no is behaving amorally.
President Bush rejected President Ahmadinejad's invitation to
a debate at the UN.
Perhaps Bush is ashamed that, unlike Ahmadinejad, he was not
democratically elected to his office. Perhaps he worries that his
command of the English language is inferior. Or perhaps he does not
want the world to note the similarities between these two religious
fanatics that don't respect human rights.
Israel has ended its
blockade of Lebanon.
The excuse for the blockade was to stop Hezbollah from receiving arms.
Various writers have noted that this was nonsense, and in fact
Hezbollah had plenty of arms right up to the cease fire. I think the
blockade, like the attacks on civilian targets such as fishing boats,
power plants by the sea and their oil tanks, highways, cities, and
convoys of fleeing civilians, were simply a way of taking all Lebanon
hostage.
Interview with Yonatan Shapira, who led the campaign of Israeli
pilots to refuse to attack the Palestinian territories.
The Mexican election tribunal officially awarded the presidency to
Calderon,
ignoring widespread irregularities, thus expressing contempt for
Mexican voters.
I don't see how Lopez Obrador can continue the fight in a way that
could win in the short term. The conspiracy of thieves has apparently
triumphed. However, in the long term, simply repeating everywhere
that Calderon stole the election and is not a legitimate president
will make it harder for him to get away with Bush-style cruelty.
I wish the citizens of USA were so determined to defend their
democracy.
The New Orientalism's
'Barbarians' and 'Outlaws'.
The separation between church and state is extremely important;
regimes that don't respect it deserve disapproval. However, that
doesn't invalidate the main conclusions of the article. People who
don't respect human rights are wrong, but that doesn't make them
cease to be human themselves.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel reports on how the occupation of
Gaza is killing people. Some die because the hospitals have no
specialists, or no electricity. Some die from treatable diseases
because they are not allowed to go to Egypt for treatment.
And then there is malnutrition.
Palestinians with foreign passports, and resident spouses, are being
systematically
denied the right to return to Palestine if they ever
leave. Israel cruelly tells them to ask permission from a committee
which has not met since 2000.
The weekly nonviolent protest in Bil'in met with
violent attack by the Israeli army.
Bush has moved 14 prisoners from secret prisons to Guantanamo, thus
admitting that the
US operates secret prisons. The practice
apparently continues, since there is no indication that they are now
empty. Bush says that Guantanamo will follow the Geneva Conventions,
but not the secret CIA prisons.
It is clear that this step is a small concession, meant to stave off
pressure to truly end these evil practices. Bush continues to pretend
that "the US does not torture" (i.e., if Bush approves it, it isn't
torture), and to pretend that the prisoners in Guantanamo are all
guilty of something beyond resentment of the way they have been
treated there (we know this is not true).
Life in the West Bank is being crushed as Israeli checkpoints prevent
Palestinians from going to work, to school, to the hospital, etc.
US government
anti-marijuana ads actually promote marijuana use, says
a study whose report was buried for two years by White House.
Marijuana is much less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol, so the
question of how to discourage its use is not the most important of
drug policy questions. I think the most interesting aspect of this
deception is that it demonstrates that the Bush regime's pervasive
dishonesty extends to drug policies. If the regime were sincerely
fanatical about reducing marijuana use, it would have dropped this
method upon learning that it doesn't work. That it did not do so is
proof that it is motivated by other goals. I do not have direct
evidence of what those goals are, but I speculate it is a matter of
public image. These ads may not discourage use of pot, but they sure
look like trying.
Resentment against the aqggression of Bush and Blair has made large
areas of the Middle East dangerous for all Americans and Britons.
Their "war on terror", which veils a war to keep the Muslim world
under US control, strengthens the one movement which seems capable of
resistance: that of Islamic fanaticism.
Discouragement among the Bush forces is showing in the mainstream
press.
Of course, it is "balanced" with "patriotic" gung-ho talk. Some
soldiers claim that with more troops they could make the Iraqis who
hate them welcome them instead. Some claim that Anbar would slide
into chaos without them, but that's ridiculous; the resistance there
is well-organized, has near-universal public support, and has already
proved itself capable of governing cities.
Gaza doctors encounter mysterious injuries in people killed by the
Israeli forces, leading to speculations about some sort of unknown
weapon.
Prominent scientists have denounced
the AIDS policies of South Africa as "ineffective and immoral".
President Mbeki, who also supports water privatization policies that
caused an epidemic of cholera, has denied that HIV causes AIDS.
Bush wants to declare war on the whole Muslim world,
and anyone in the US who disagrees.
Italy is considering a conflict-of-interest law that would
require Berlusconi to end direct contact with his media empire if he
holds office again.
A law like this is needed, but Italy should also explicitly limit
media concentration, which would
force Berlusconi to break up his
media empire.
The Taliban have regained control of half of Afghanistan.
The war against the Taliban 'causes misery and hunger' for Afghan
civilians. Of course, those civilians will blame NATO and support the
Taliban.
The reason for the "lost opportunity" of failing to reconstruct
Afghanistan was that Bush really wanted to attack Iraq instead. If
even half the money spent on that act of aggression had been pumped
into Afghanistan, it might be stable with the Taliban just a memory.
Pentagon Spends Billions to
outsource torture.
Bliar is deporting Iraqi refugees to Iraq even though they face the
threat of violence for their politics. (Life in Iraq is very
dangerous even for people who are not specifically persecuted.)
I think the reason for these deportations is to uphold the official
pretense that Iraq is getting better every day. Governments act
according to their own propaganda to avoid creating inconsistencies.
Al Sistani has lost influence to radicals such as al Sadr, and has
withdrawn from politics.
Israel plans a large expansion of
settlements in Palestine.
Iran's ex-president Khatami, speaking in Chicago, condemned
the neocons for policies that stimulate extremism.
Everyone: tell ABC you object to their presentation of a biased,
Bush-supporting history of the 9/11 attacks in the US.
As part of the War on the Environment, the Bush regime is trying to
sneak around requirements for dams to protect salmon.
Under the "interim government" which Bush put into power in Haiti,
30,000 rapes were committed-- many of them by the Bush-supported police
and army.
Sudan has ordered peacekeeping forces to leave,
and plans to send in its own troops, perhaps to commit genocide.
US voters: help MoveOn by going to a campaign phone party
this weekened.
See moveon.org
Economic analysis rejects CEOs' claim that they earn their tremendous
income.
Valerie Plame's job at the CIA, in 2002 and 2003, was to find evidence
of Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Of
course, she was unable to find any credible evidence of their
existence. Perhaps one of the reasons for punishing her was that
she didn't lie for Dubya.
British troops in the Bush forces have abandoned a base because it was
under too much attack. They are under siege in Basra too.
This was supposed to be the "safe" part of Iraq, which Bush handed to
British units because they were supposed to know how to remain on good
terms with the locals. Apparently that plan has now failed too.
Profiteering from the Iraq war is rampant and steeped in cheating and
fraud.
You might say that this is not news. In the Bush regime, diversion of
funds by profiteers is not considered a problem; it's the whole point.
So of course it happens often. Nonetheless, the details are important
for appreciating the depth of the regime's corruption.
For instance, why would Natsios give a no-bid contract to Bechtel
after observing Bechtel's cost overruns in Massachusetts? If his goal
were to spend public funds wisely, the Big Dig would have taught him
not to trust Bechtel again. But suppose that his goal is to feed
money to a company that is going to reward him later on. Bechtel
would have told him "Good work" after the big dig, and it would be
natural to continue the profitable collaboration.
To Stay Alive, Iraqis Change Their Names
Bush is trying to slip through a law to revise the War Crimes Ac
so as to evade prosecution. He hopes that Americans won't notice.
The background of the uprising in Oaxaca: resistance to a government
that has arrested political organizers and shut opposition newspapers.
EPA scientists are fighting back against Bush's War on Integrity: they
have denounced, through their union, the political pressure placed on
them by pesticide companies to disregard the EPA rules.
The Bush regime has arbitrarily declared the whistleblower's
protection part of the Clean Water Act void for federal workers.
Since Bush represents business and not the citizens, he does not want
polluting businesses to have to obey this law. In effect, he has told
government employees that they dare not report violations.
The Bush forces have lost control over al-Anbar province, which
contains Falluja and Ramadi. They move around a little but
achieve nothing except to get killed.
Salt Lake City Mayor Anderson blasts President Bush.
A supposed "al Qa'ida plot" in Florida was mainly organized by an FBI
provocateur.
The second blow falls on Lebanon: to rebuild what Israel destroyed,
it is offered IMF loans instead of aid.
Hezbollah may be able to reduce the harm that the IMF does in Lebanon.
For instance, the IMF commonly makes countries force children to pay
to go to elementary school. If the IMF does that in Lebanon,
Hezbollah might offer free schooling in the regions where it operates.
Bush, you better tell the IMF to be gentle this time.
There is a big media campaign to exonerate the Bush administration
for leaking Valerie Plame's name to the press.
As Iraqis and Americans die, CEOs prosper.
Greg Palast reports on how Bush has prosecuted the class war
against Americans.
Some in the Pentagon would like to create a civil war in Syria like
the one in Iraq. See the last paragraph of this belligerent article.
Evidence of widespread irregularity in Mexico's election.
Based on this, I think that nullifying the election and holding another
is the right thing for Mexico to do.
For More details see here
Iran's experience with Iraqi chemical weapons-- and the US's
shielding of Saddam's use of them at the time-- led to a view that
"international laws are nothing but ink on paper" which will not
protect them. The only way to be safe, they concluded, is to have
nuclear weapons.
Bush's visible contempt for the Geneva Conventions surely does not
help to reassure Iran to put its trust in treaties.
An ice core from Antarctica has enabled scientists to measure the CO2
level for 800,000 years. It has never been as high as it is today.
Thus, we can now be certain that humanity has pushed the Earth's
biosphere outside the natural range.
See Clinton Eugene Curtis's testimony about how he was paid to write
a program to rig elections using Diebold machines.
1/4 of the World Bank's programs are menaced with
failure due to global warming.
Many World Bank programs do harm on society as a byproduct.
If the programs are ineffective because of global warming,
that won't avoid the harm; it is only the benefits
that won't materialize.
One of the airline bomb plot suspects is accused of "possessing items
likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of
terrorism". These items consist of wills given him when he was a
child, and
a map of Afghanistan he drew as a child.
What sort of state consider it a crime to have drawn a map of
Afghanistan? Only one that does not recognize human rights. What
makes this danger more subtle is that it isn't a crime for everyone.
It is only a crime for people that are somehow considered "suspect".
And that depends on things like who your friends are. Say farewell
to freedom of association, too.
(I also wonder how the geography of Afghanistan can be considered
"useful" for any sort of violence in the UK. But that's just a side issue
and should not distract us from the main issue.)
The Mexican court which rejected calls for a full recount has approved
the results of a partial recount-- which did not change the outcome
much.
We don't know who really won the Mexican presidential election, but
Lopez Obrador is not inclined to concede the fight.
Protestors by members of Mexico's congress forced president Vincente
Fox to abandon his annual state-of-the-nation speech. They called him a
"traitor to democracy".
Bush is a traitor to democracy, too. I wish we had more people in the
US Congress who were willing to say it.
The European monitoring mission (for the truce that is now dead) to
Sri Lanka accuses the government of massacring 17 aid workers, and
obstructing the investigation afterward.
Disaster capitalism: the privatization of disaster relief means
that in the future only the privileged and/or wealthy will be rescued.
Blair has decided to broaden the censorship of "violent porn". The idea is to
prohibit even the possession of a copy.
I share the disgust that some feel for this violence. I find some
popular violent video games so disgusting that I cannot bear to look
at them. But that does not mean I believe they should be censored.
Censorship is more dangerous than images of violence.
It threatens everyone in society.
Jewish peace activists held protests in New York, San Francisco and
Philadelphia against support of Israel's belligerent policies.
A businessman in the US has been arrested for enabling clients to view
the broadcasts of al Manar television, which is the channel of
Hezbollah. This accusation was made in despite of an explicit exception
in the law.
California is about to adopt a CO2 emissions trading scheme
for electric generation; but its requirements won't start for 6 years.
If we are to avoid disaster, we'd better not wait six years before
starting to pressure companies to conserve.
An attempt by Israelis to protest at the military kangaroo court where
Palestinians are sentenced to prison reveals the dishonesty and
despotism into which the occupation has led Israel.
There's pressure for a ban on cluster bombs, as Israel is accused of
dropping them on civilian areas.
The Israeli response is a sort of boilerplate--the way governments try
to evade accusations which they can't really deny.
Oxfam calls on rich countries to support poor countries' governments
in working to end poverty and improve public health, instead of imposing
privatization that tends to do harm.
Oxfam pounts out that it was through government programs that the
now-advanced countries of the West did this.
For more information, see
here
An eye witness reports on the uprising of the poor that has taken
control of the Mexican city of Oaxaca.
Weak EU fishing rules are pushing sharks to the brink of extinction,
since fishing boats cut off the fins and throw the rest of the dead
shark back in the sea. So what does the EU propose to do about this?
Make it worse!
This is an example of the insane short-sightedness of fishermen.
They'd rather put themselves entirely out of a job next year, by killing
all the fish, than accept any decrease in employment this year.
The New York Times censored one of its articles to readers in the UK,
bowing to Bliar's threats to prosecute whoever might publish the
information. The article casts doubts on some of the airplane bomb plot
accusations.
A Russian MP's report blames the Russian government for seeking to
kill the Beslan hostage takers rather than to rescue the hostages.
Sudan rejected pressure to allow UN peacekeepers in Darfur, and says
it will instead send its own army. Since the murderous Janjaweed are
supported by the government, the Sudanese troops are more likely to
help them than to restrain them.
Al Sadr's militia beat "Iraqi" troops in Diwaniyah and
forced them out
of the town.
PIRG proposes a plan for the US to reduce CO2 emissions.
European car manufacturers asked to be allowed to manage their own
reduction in CO2 emissions-- but then they didn't do it.
This happens over and over: an industry is faced with regulation to
solve an urgent problem, and says "Please don't pass a law; we will
regulate ourselves and achieve the same result more efficiently." And
then it is left on its own and fails to do the job. Those businessmen
make a monkey out of us time and again.
It is good to see that the EU has enough strength to respond by
threatening to do the job by regulation after all. But I think the
right thing to do, if we want to give an industry the chance to
correct a problem through self-regulation, is to pass a law that will
kick automatically in if the problem is not solved that way.
The oil spill in Lebanon is still spreading.
It was caused by Israeli bombing of a civilian target,
which is supposed to be a war crime.
The Iraqi civil war now extends to
killing patients in hospitals.
I think the only solution is to divide Iraq, and divide Baghdad, into
zones that can be protected by each side, with foreign troops to
support each side. The Bush forces and their "Iraqi government" won't
allow this, so they have to get out first.
Western Union blocks lots of money transfers by Muslims,
and often won't give them a straight story about why.
Olmert "accepts responsibility" for the war, as an excuse for
rejecting the demand for an investigation.
This is just lip service. If he really took responsibility for a
giant failure, he would resign.
The brutal campaign of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda
may be ended by a cease fire and an amnesty.
This army kidnaped children and forced them to become fighters-- so
that many of the perpetrators of these crimes are former victims. But
there are some clear exceptions.
This army kidnaped children and forced them to become fighters-- so
that many of the perpetrators of these crimes are former victims. But
there are some clear exceptions.
The amnesty may be the only way to end the rampage, given the limited
resources available. If the US had sent an army there instead of to
Iraq, it could probably have defeated the LRA, which was feared rather
than supported by the people among whom it operated.
Bush is now using the argument that the occupation of Iraq
should continue because of how badly it has messed things up
thus far.
This article criticizes the Bush regime at a practical level, but at a
deeper level the article does not dare to doubt. It takes Bush's lies
about "moral clarity" seriously. It presumes that Bush is a supporter
of democracy--and that Hugo Chavez is its enemy. When it says that
Chavez's continuance in office is a "symptom of administration
distraction", it presumes in effect that a less distracted Bush regime
would have overthrown Chavez, and it does not raise any ethical question
about whether an unelected regime has a right to depose an elected one.
Robert Kennedy Jr. charges that the "Help America Vote Act"
was designed, through Diebold lobbying, to encourage the
use of easily corruptible voting machines that would make it
easy to steal future elections. Meanwhile, minorities
are now being disenfranchised across the nation.
By using Bush as a front,
Cheney gets less scrutiny than he would get
if he were officially president.
Jimmy Carter denounces the
Bush regime as un-American.
And he denounces Bliar for being "so compliant and subservient"
to Bush.
A city in the US offers free censored internet access,
Chinese style.
Greg Palast reveals how
Republican cronies were paid for producing a
"plan" for evacuating New Orleans, but no one can find any copy of it.
Louisiana's best hurricane expert complained that poor people without
cars were being ignored, so they threatened his job. He refused to be
silenced, but they ignored him anyway.
Although I agree with Palast's point that we shouldn't let this
"natural" disaster excuse the wrongdoing, I disagree with his
way of putting it.
It would be more rational to say that a hurricane had to arrive sooner
or later, so the lack of preparation (remember that Bush cut funds to
strengthen the levies in order to pay for war in Iraq) was sure to
cause its harm sooner or later.
A British soldier killed himself rather than serve in the Bush
forces in Iraq. He had been told he would have to shoot young children
on suspicion of carrying suicide bombs.
Private Chelsea is a hero, for the sacrifice
that he made in order to avoid doing evil.
I would have urged him to make the smaller sacrifice
of going to prison, which would also have done the job.
But maybe for him that would have been a bigger sacrifice.
The Yes Men struck again in New Orleans: a speaker pretending
to represent the Department of Housing and Urban Development
announced many new policies that would benefit the city's residents.
In response, real government officials angrily denounced the hoaxer
for giving the poor false hopes of receiving the help that the government
of a democratic state would give them.
George Lakoff describes how different ideas of "freedom" frame
today's political debates for both sides.
Lakoff's point about framing issues of "freedom" is valid overall, in
my opinion, but he falls prey to various confusions in the details.
I reject the concept of "positive freedom" as a distortion of the
meaning of the word "freedom". Also, we must not reject as a
progressive anyone who ever did anything which wasn't progressive.
Carter's domestic policies were very progressive when compared with
today's Democrats, and supporting a dictator such as the Shah, while
wrong, is a small wrong by today's standards.
All across Europe, the pattern is the same:
due to global warming, animals and plants begin spring several days
earlier than they did a few years ago. (This includes parasites that can wipe
out other species which are under stress.)
A Chinese lawyer who exposed forced abortions in China has been
sentenced on trumped-up charges after a fake trial.
Ten months after Katrina:
Gutting New Orleans.
I don't think that New Orleans should be rebuild in the
same place--I think it should be moved to high ground.
But wherever it is located, it should be run as a livable city.
Israel has finally given permission to try to clean up the Lebanese oil
spill which was caused by bombardment of a power plant (a non-military target).
Oil spill cleanups are at best partially effective, and this one,
delayed for a month by Israel, will be even less so.
The US Department of Energy is starting to talk about
peak oil, but with the soothing suggestion that it might not occur for
20 years-- hardly the thing to encourage necessary action.
When 12 Indian passengers on a KLM flight disobeyed rules about seat
belts and cell phones, the plane landed and they were arrested and held incommunicado.
I read elsewhere that the Indian consulate was not allowed to visit them
and was given misleading information about them.
I am not surprised that they kicked Antunius Slotboom off the plane
for criticizing what he saw; something like this has happened to me,
too. Cabin staff have arbitrary power to kick passengers out, and
they do this arbitrarily like littled like despots. Obedience is not
enough; they demand uncomplaining, sheeplike obedience. I feel that
every time I go through an airport I am being taught to be the
obedient subject of a despotic regime.
I don't agree with all the opinions expressed in that article; for
instance, I think that banning liquids on board, in India or wherever,
is justified if it is not feasible to check them for explosives. I
also don't see that SPOT is particularly likely to finger Muslims; at
least, not more often than it fingers me. I often rub or scratch my
chin when I am thinking about a difficult problem.
A contraceptive outreach campaign has cut teen pregnancies by over 20%
in a part of England. Christian fanatics are aghast, but others in
the UK plan to copy the campaign. Three cheers for them!
Israel dropped cluster bombs over inhabited areas. The bomblets are
still killing people. Amazingly, the Bush regime says it objects to
this.
"Bush regime does (or at least says) the right thing" is certainly news.
The Japanese prime minister's visit to the Yasukuni shrine is part of
a larger phenomenon: whitewashing the Japanese aggression of World War
II and
forgetting the lessons of peace that Japanese learned after the
war.
I've read that these new Japanese nationalists even try to excuse the
enslavement of women from conquered countries as prostitutes for
soldiers.
Amnesty International calls for immediate investigation of Israel's
war crimes that killed a thousand Lebanese civilians, and Hezbollah's
war crimes that killed some 40 Israelis civilians.
Israeli forces have turned the
Palestinian town of Nablus into a prison.
Men aged less than 32 are simply forbidden to leave; and when they try,
they are shot on the spot for nothing more than trying to travel.
And that is just the icing on the cake of the occupation.
Here's what it is like for Palestinians trying to go through
Israeli checkpoints.
Uri Avnery writes about what Bashar Assad has noted that Israelis
don't want to see.
The horse chestnut trees of Britain are being wiped out by pathogens,
aided by the long drought that is due to global warming.
Iran is the chief beneficiary of Bush's supposed "war on terror", says
a respected think tank.
We've seen for years that Bush's foreign policy has played into the
hands of al Qa'ida. Perhaps this is stupidity, or perhaps it is an
intentional plan (since al Qa'ida gives Bush the excuse to attack our
freedom). What's news here is that the hostile state that Bush loves
to hate is getting a similar boost from Bush's policies.
Bush's judges have found all-purposes excuses to authorize Bush to do
whatever he likes for his cronies, and do whatever he likes to you.
The term for such a regime is
'despotism'.
An MEP (Member of the European Parliament) of Asian descent says he was
'treated like a terrorist while travelling'.
The Lebanon ceasefire is fragile, warns the UN.
The US FDA agreed to let adults buy emergency contraception without a
prescription. Maybe this will eliminate the widespread problem of
pharmacists that refuse to fill the prescriptions.
However, the new policy is not fully adequate, since women under 18
will still face obstacles that may lead to their having unwanted
babies.
The opposition of many "right to life" groups to this pill, which
would eliminate the need for abortions, reveals the real agenda of
most abortion opponents. As Christian fanatics, they consider sex
evil, and they want to pregnancy to be a punishment for sex.
The Israeli army is crushing joint non-violent protests in Bil'in
before they start.
Apparently Israel would prefer that Palestinians practice violent
resistance.
A natural gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic sea threatens to
stir up 60,000 tons of old chemical weapons dumped there.
I've read elsewhere that the locations of many of these weapons dumps
are unknown--and the pipeline proponents respond, with invincible
illogic, that they have avoided the known dump sites and isn't that
enough?
Bush is forcing retired Marines back onto active duty.
I guess not enough people are volunteering to fight for him.
Iraqis "didn't want to die for Saddam", and Americans don't want to die
for Bush's war profiteer cronies.
Massachusetts voters: support
Jill Stein's campaign for Secretary of State.
State Farm insurance company systematically destroyed and distorted
damage reports so as to avoid paying claims.
I can understand how insurance company executives, if they do not mind
committing fraud, would feel the need to do this. In the long run,
private insurance companies will be overwhelmed by the series of
billion-dollar disasters that rising seas and increasingly powerful
and numerous hurricanes will cause. They will either cheat their
clients, or go broke, or stop insuring anyone in coastal areas and
cities. One way or another, the victims of these man-made disasters
won't get insurance payments.
In the Philippines, it's not proved that the government is behind the
wave of assassinations of opposition figures. But it certainly uses
violence against the student protestors who oppose this, and that
substantiates the accusations.
California has established a large coastal marine reserve area
where no fishing is allowed.
A series of disasters shows that a strictly calculated approach to
protecting fish from overfishing is asking for trouble. There is a
lot we don't know about marine ecosystems, and fishing practices; as a
result, attempts to calculate a safely sustainable level of fishing
often drastically overestimate that level. Due caution today calls
for drastic steps.
2/3 of Katrina reconstruction contracts were given out without
proper bidding to contractors that wasted money.
Republicans work for their business cronies, and their principal
aim is to benefit those cronies. The sad thing is that the Democrats
are on the path towards similar conduct.
Michael Scheuer, former chief of CIA's bin Laden unit, agrees
that Bush's invasion of Iraq and unquestioning support of Israel
has been a disaster for the US.
(He doesn't address the question of the morality of Bush's
activities.)
The Bush regime pulled the rug out from negotiations with Iran
in June, paving the way for the war he wants.
Israel refuses to explain why it attacked the refugee convoy from Marjayoun.
How the Taliban have all but conquered Kandahar.
Ray McGovery (ex CIA agent) explains how the people referred to as ' the crazies' by most of the first Bush administration subsequently
took over the US government.
Six prisoners in Guantanamo, handed over illegally by the government
of Bosnia in response to bullying by the US, remain imprisoned even
though the US now admits the accusations against them were false.
The Bush regime's series of bullshit excuses for keeping these men in
prison reminds me of the series of bullshit excuses for invading Iraq.
The unwillingness ever to admit a mistake reminds me of the Soviet
Union.
Joel Salatin has developed organic farming into a 21-st century
process that uses sophistication rather than the brute force
industrial methods of factory farms.
Although the article does not say this 100%, I would expect this
method is efficient than conventional farming in regard to most inputs
-- perhaps even land (a battery chicken farm is very compact, but it
depends on lots more space to grow feed for those chickens). The two
big exceptions are human labor and skill; Salatin's method needs a lot
of them.
So if we are forced, by global warming and/or peak oil, to move to
making our food this way, many more people will have to become
farmers. Many people might like this, but not me. I hope I am not
one of them.
Salatin writes about how many regulations combine to prevent his farm
from doing useful things. For instance, the farm is not allowed to
slaughter its own cattle, nor to sell the meat when the cattle are
slaughtered elsewhere.
Some of the regulations he objects to are necessary in some form. For
instance, we don't want real Wal-Mart stores to set up on farm land
and sell a little bit of vegetables that they grow in a greenhouse as
an excuse to reduce their taxes. We don't want to make it easy for
children's labor to be exploited by a social system that makes the
option of not "volunteering" impractical. Lots of factory farms
exist, so they must be regulated for safety.
But I am sure there is a way to relax some of these rules for real
small farms, so that could have more flexibility.
Unions in Colombia are facing illegal police raids, death threats, and
assassination. It is done by paramilitaries that work for Uribe, who
works for Bush.
US citizens: tell your congressmen to support the REAL (Responsible Education About Life) Act, to promote useful sex education that helps
teens avoid pregnancy and diseases, without the perverse goal
of celibacy.
Here is more information about that bill.
Bush and Bliar have a pattern of saving us from "terrorist plots" that
were never more than vague ideas promoted by a government provocateur.
The civil war in Iraq could spread to neighboring countries,
potentially destabilizing the whole region.
This article argues against withdrawing the Bush forces, but it
doesn't present any clearly superior course of action. It is right
that simply withdrawing them will not necessarily lead to peace, let
alone freedom and democracy. But continuing the occupation won't
either. Given the Iraqi hatred of the occupiers, and their hatred of
all Iraqis, I don't believe that the Bush forces can achieve any good
at all in Iraq. If there is a job that needs to be done by foreign
troops, the Bush forces are the last ones that should try it.
The PCHR weekly report shows how the Israeli attack against the Palestinians, their homes, their land, their food, etc.,
continues.
Bush admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks,
contradicting his previous claims which he made to try to justify
invading Iraq.
But Bush continues to pretend that Iraq was going to be a threat to
the US. Which was nonsense.
Joe Darby tells about revealing the torture at Abu Ghraib, and how he
was subsequently afraid of reprisals--which did arrive: he driven out
of his town by military personnel and their relatives who believed
that torture should not be punished.
Darby says that these men were not ordered to commit torture by their
commanders, and I believe him; but this does not mean that higher-ups
aren't directly responsible. They are responsible for the general
military attitude which supports torturers (and we can see the public
statements that supported this it). They are also responsible for
sending in the interrogators from unnamed other government agencies.
While Lebanon occupied the world's attention, Israeli tanks occupied
part of Gaza for a month, destroying and killing. Over 200 Palestinians
have been killed in Gaza, including 58 children.
Here's a description of how some of those civilians were killed.
The Palestinian fighters surely know that firing from a school puts
Palestinian children at risk. And the Israeli fighters surely know
that, if they shoot at a launcher half an hour after a missile is
fired, the only people they are likely to hit are civilians. Neither
of these wrongs excuses the other.
An Israeli complains that Israeli fighters also lurk among civilians
in cities.
It has been many years since Israeli leaders attempted to talk about
peace with Palestinians. Unilateralism has been Israel's firm policy.
Now Israel needs to reconsider not just its war plan, but its
eager preference for war over peace.
What is the ethical responsibility for "unintended" casualties
caused by war?
Burning ethanol made from corn is not a feasible solution to global warming, because it needs too much corn. The entire US corn crop
would only provide 1/6 of the US consumption of automobile fuel.
I see another danger: too much demand for ethanol for cars could result
in cutting down the rainforests to grow crops for fuel.
Much of the US corn crop is used for growing beef. Eating less meat
is therefore an effective way to free up corn either for human food or
for conversion into fuel. It's worth doing, but we have to do lots of
other things too. We need policies that systematically encourage
conservation. The US could cut out a large fraction of its fuel use
just by adopting the policies that have already worked in Europe.
Human activities are running out of fresh water supplies. Comsumption
is growing faster than anticipated.
The oil spill in Lebanon caused by Israeli bombing is likely to harm humans, fish, and turtles for 10 years.
The oil tanks were not a military target, so bombing them had no possible
motivation except to make Lebanese civilians suffer. It will do that,
and make the whole ecosystem suffer as well.
US rice is contaminated with a genetically engineered strain which was never approved for human consumption.
Companies that cannot be trusted to prevent use of strains that
haven't been approved should not be allowed to do genetic engineering
at all.
Sudan is blocking the UN from protecting southern civilians from the
Janjaweed militia it supports to kill them, and has charged a European
journalist with "spying" for publishing that he had found mass graves.
If Bush were serious about humanitarian concern, he would have intervened
here, rather than in Iraq.
All-Night Queues as Baghdad Runs Out of Petrol.
The Japanese prime minister's visit to the Yasukuni shrine is part of
a larger trend: whitewashing the Japanese aggression of World War II,
even up to the enslavement of women from conquered countries as
prostitutes for soldiers. The danger here is that Japan will unlearn
the lessons that it learned from the war.
Many US companies have been caught lying about stock options
as a way of falsifying their profits.
Although attention focuses on the Bush prisoners in Guantanamo, Bush
and his proxies have kept prisoners in Haiti too, for years, for no
reason.
The Bush forces that murdered civilians in Haditha appear to have doctored evidence to cover it up.
The military operates by making troops loyal to their buddies, so when
your buddy murders a civilian, you lie for him. (It's just like the
cops.)
Such violence against civilians is the norm, not the exception.
American journalist Nir Rosen, who is often mistaken for an Iraqi by
the Bush forces, reports on how they treat perceived Iraqis (including
him). Misunderstandings are frequent between people who don't speak
the same language, and the Bush forces interpret them all as evidence
of an attack.
A friend was looking for free sound samples, free in the sense of free
software (see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html), and he came
across freesound.iua.upf.edu.
On checking further, he found that the
samples in your site are in fact not free in this sense. This is
because of the license that you have used does not allow commercial
redistribution.
It's a confusing state of affairs that a site called "freedsound"
holds sounds which are not free. The best solution would be to
make them free.
So how about it?
The Iraqi civil war has escalated to use of rockets and mortars.
Bush's final gamble:
giving Iraq a dictator?
Some would say Iraq has never stopped having a dictator; but if the
Bush regime acknowledges imposing one, it will be the final nail in
the coffin of his third false excuse for the war. However, at this
point I think it would be difficult for a dictator to rule Iraq, even
if he did not have the handicap of being associated with foreign
aggressors.
Bush has given arms manufacturers a bonanza-- even aside from the war.
Two engineers who uncovered illegal US activities in Europe were found
dead in apparent suicides. Were they murdered at US instigation?
Various Bush forces veterans state their support for Lt Watada.
The Bush forces are setting up walls to separate neighborhoods in Iraq.
This has a resemblance to my recommendation of allowing the Iraqi groups
to divide up that country. However, I think walls alone will not suffice
while the Bush forces remain in occupation.
Lopez Obrador's supporters in Mexico refuse to concede the election.
US troops in South Vietnam were investigated for 320 war crimes:
torture, rape, and murder. Few were convicted, even fewer punished,
and the worst punishment was a few months imprisonment.
Such conduct is nearly inevitable in the occupation of a hostile
populace, even if it is prohibited: when the troops think of the civilians
as the enemy, this is how they vent their anger.
Kurdish guerrilla movements are operating in Turkey and Iran from
bases in the effectively independent Kurdish region of Iraq.
Turkey and Iran both seem to be on the
verge of invading.
How the US can improve disaster management: eliminate FEMA and bring
in Hezbollah.
The US agency that regulates experimental genetically engineered plants
does not bother to enforce its own rules, says a judge.
A temperature rise of 2C, now inevitable, will cause 30% loss of
forests in Europe, as well as floods and droughts there and elsewhere.
One additional degree is likely to mean 60% loss of the world's
forests. And any more is likely to cause positive feedback leading to
total disaster.
Congress poised to uuravel the
Internet.
The Blair regime's favorite activity is prohibiting things.
It is introducing new crimes faster than one per day.
Uri Avnery: Israel's last-minute enlarged offensive was a publicity
stunt which backfired in its aim of showing the Israeli army
triumphant. So it is being diverted into pressure for renewed war.
Disaster profiteers are getting a windfall from reconstruction of
the Gulf Coast, while local companies are frozen out, or do not get paid.
Plasma TV screens cause a big increase in electricity demand. (TV is
nearly all crap anyway; I'd recommend not having a TV at all.)
Lt. Ehren Watada asks Americans to show all the soldiers that they
will support whoever refuses to participate in the occupation of Iraq.
Eating less meat is an important way to reduce global warming.
Fumes from school buses damage children's lungs and
can cause asthma.
A federal judge ruled that the
NSA's surveillance program is unconstitutional.
It is too early to celebrate a victory. I am sure Bush will appeal
this decision, and he is already talking about asking Congress to
override it.
The UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon faces
conflicting expectations.
Venezuela is leading the race for a UN Security Council seat,
as a result of world-wide organizing efforts for power blocs
to resist US government power. But the US is still trying to
prevent this, using that same power in favor of the brutal
client government in Guatemala.
After British Muslim leaders sent a letter criticizing Blair
for foreign policy that encourages terrorism, the Blair regime has reacted
by trying to look tough, and saying "That's no reason to stop."
The letter is weak for two reasons. One, that it says it comes
specifically from Muslims. If it were presented as the statement of a
group people who love freedom and hate mass murder, regardless of
their religious views, it would weigh more.
Two, that it pulls its punches: it is too soft on Blair. The letter
should have said that all the terrorist plots put together, both the
successful ones and the failed ones, would have been small compared
with the mass murder Bush and Blair have committed.
That UK foreign policy makes enemies is not necessarily enough reason
to change it (though it does count). That it is a heinous crime and
makes enemies is plenty of reason.
The Bush forces raided the Iraqi health minister's office, arresting
pits guards. The minister is connect with al Sadr's militia, which
fought the Bush forces when they attacked it.
The ministry of health in Iraq today is an absurdity in itself; the
main threat to Iraqis' health comes from the Bush occupation and its
effects. If a health minister cannot change that, his job is
prima facie impossible.
Airplane bombers hoped to destroy 10 airplanes over a period of
months, which could have killed up to 2800 people.
I might have been one of them--I was going to be flying through
London--but I refuse to exaggerate this danger into "Mass murder on an
unimaginable scale". Some 100,000 had been killed by the invasion and
occupation of Iraq as of a year and a half ago, so we can easily
imagine it might be 150,000 by now.
Bush "viewed war in
Lebanon as a curtain-raiser for attack on Iran".
Senator Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democratic primary to Ned
Lamont, who criticizes Bush's conduct of the war.
I've read elsewhere that polls suggest that Lieberman can beat Lamont
and the Republican candidate in a three-way race. This means there is
still ways to go to knock him out.
The weekly nonviolent Palestinian/Israeli protests at Bil'in continue,
but only the protestors are nonviolent-- not the soldiers. This
week, soldiers took advantage of the distraction of the war in Lebanon
to begin shooting protestors. They shot one protestor in the head at
close range with a plastic-coated metal bullet, which broke his
skull, entered his brain, and caused injuries that may be permanent.
The corruption of the Afghan government, as well as its inability to
dominate the warlords, leads Afghans to calculate that it can't shield
them from the Taliban either.
Robert Fisk: Desert of trapped corpses testifies to Israel's failure.
Robert Fisk warns that the UN cease fire is unlikely to hold, saying that
the real guerrilla is likely to start now with the renewed Israeli occupation
of southern Lebanon.
As soon as Israel saw the UN cease fire resolution coming,
it complied with the call to end "offensive military operations"
by launching a bigger invasion and calling it "defensive".
Brazil's indigenous peoples are policing the rainforest
against
illegal logging.
I am, however, worried by their apparently very high rate of
population growth. There may be no immediate problem, since their
population is still pretty small. But rapid population growth is a
dangerous habit for any group to get into.
A new kind of car engine
uses boron for energy storage. It reacts the
boron with water to make hydrogen and then oxidizes the hydrogen to
make water again. The boron gets oxidized by this and eventually
needs to be replenished.
Storing boron sounds much safer than trying to distribute and store
hydrogen itself. If you could exchange your oxidized boron container
for a fresh container quickly at a filling station, this system could
be convenient enough to gain public acceptance.
But this is at best part of a complete solution for the pollution and
global warming problems. You still have to get the energy to recycle
the oxidized oxide into pure boron.
Greenland's ice is melting
3 times as fast as it was 5 years ago.
10 more years of warming might increase this rate by a further factor
of 2, or 10, or 100-- nobody can predict it. When the world plays
with Greenland's icecap, it is playing with fire.
Bush wants Congress to define
a new kind of war crime-- "conspiracy"
-- which would have very low standards of proof. However, international
standards do not recognize such a war crime.
US government employees are lucky that this is so, because it means
they can't all be swept up in a charge of conspiracy when the leaders
of the Bush regime are prosecuted for the war crimes that they ordered.
The Lebanon war: a failure for Bush, and for hawks in Israel, leaves the
US and Israel worse off than before, while causing great suffering to
Lebanese (though not on the scale of Iraq).
The vote in the Congo is falling into chaos, with ballots being burnt.
Donated tents helped shame Paris into helping its homeless people.
Bush now wants to be selective about which of the war crimes
prohibited by the Geneva Conventions can be prosecuted in the US.
Two Arab-Americans face charges of terrorism for buying a lot of cell
phones. It seems those phones can also serve as detonators for bombs.
They say that they want to resell the phones in Dallas, where these
phones are in short supply.
It's possible the police have some other evidence against these
men, which they have not disclosed. But it is also possible
that this is an example of a common phenomenon: imprisonment
on mere suspicion of people whose background contributes
to that suspicion.
The UK cleverly did this by making it illegal to be suspected.
"Reasonably" suspected, that is. A suspect's religious background can
easily play a part in deciding how "reasonable" the suspicion is, so
just possessing the cell phones could be legal grounds to sentence a
Muslim to prison.
The US hasn't defined suspicion as a crime; instead it relies on
the application of very low standards in court.
Hezbollah and Israel seem prepared to accept the UN call for a cease fire
starting Monday, but this does not mean Israel will entirely stop attacking.
(I have not yet seen the full text of the resolution.)
Depleted (i.e. dirty) uranium is a prime candidate
for the mysterious problems that affect some 30% of veterans
of the first Gulf War.
What it's doing to Iraqis, present and future, would be horrible
if the Bush-inspired civil war weren't even worse.
Was the thwarted airplane
bomb plot real?
I do not reject the claims as that article does, but I am skeptical
about them for most of the same reasons. Islamic fanatics do carry
out bombings, and have already attacked airliners. On the other hand,
Bush and Bliar do lie, and the US and UK have already sentenced people
to prison as "terrorists" who never planned to do anything in
particular. It is up to the Bush and Blair regimes to show us, not
just tell us, that this plot was real. And they must stop arresting
people for vague talk, if they want our trust.
As Israel expands the war while the UN calls for a cease fire,
the war shows that Israel's leaders are incompetent as well
as murderous.
UK police foiled a
plot to blow up airplanes.
The Blair regime will surely find this useful for its persistent
campaign to abolish the very idea that there should be any human
rights that the government cannot take away by a decree.
They want their subjects to give the state total power and blind
faith, in the name of safety from terrorism. But safety can never be
perfect; even totalitarian regimes had crime, and resistance. So they
can always claim, "With more power, we can keep you (a tiny bit)
safer"--but human rights are more important.
BP covered up corrosion in the Alaska Pipeline for a decade, then
"discovered" it just when shutting the pipeline provides them a windfall.
Iran has banned Shirin Ebadi's legal counseling group for dissidents,
and has already sentenced one of its founders to prison on charges of
"revealing state secrets".
Charges of "revealing state secrets" are typically a sign of
a repressive regime.
Iraqi PM al Maliki condemned the Bush forces for killing civilians in
its attack on a Shi'ite militia. This reflects the contradictory
demands on him: he depends on the Bush forces to stay in power, but he
can only gain any stature by condemning their atrocities.
The Sadr militia might well be guilty of practicing torture, and also
guilty of murdering Sunnis. I would not put it past them. But I
suspect that the main reason the Bush forces attacked it was for its
long history of hostility to the Bush forces.
Drought-stricken Europe verging on
'natural disaster'.
Except that this disaster is not natural. It is caused
by burning fossil fuel.
Israel, frustrated by its inability to defeat the Hezbollah guerrilla
army, dropped leaflets
threatening civilians in large areas near Beirut.
Halliburton is being investigated by the UK for plans for bribery.
(They say "A subsidiary of Halliburton", but that's like saying
that someone's trigger finger is under investigation for shooting
a person.)
A lawsuit in California calls for a ban on use of Diebold touch-screen
voting machines.
Since the Israeli attack, even Lebanese Christians now state their
support for Hezbollah.
Halliburton is being investigated by the UK for plans for bribery.
(They say "A subsidiary of Halliburton", but that's like saying
that someone's trigger finger is under investigation for shooting
a person.)
How the US Super-Rich 'dodge' taxes-- perhaps illegally.
Hezbollah and Israel both commit war crimes by attacking civilians. A
week ago, Hezbollah proposed that both sides stop doing so.
Israel rejected the offer, saying it wants to wipe out Hezbollah.
Imagine what people would say if Hezbollah rejected such an offer and
said it was determined to proceed to wipe out Israel. Now turn it
around.
A few days ago I posted a link to an article explaining that Hezbollah
isn't a "terrorist organization"--that it has not been connected with
planning acts of terrorism for a long time. Someone responded, "What
about firing Katyusha rockets at Israel?"
Is that terrorism?
It is certainly an atrocity, just as Israel's bombing of houses,
airports, ambulances, and aid convoys is an atrocity. However,
military operations targeting civilians in time of war are not the
sort of act that we usually think of as "terrorism". I responded that
it seemed useful to make the distinction.
However, after I sent that response, I started to have second
thoughts. Even though the two are distinguishable, how much does it
really matter? People do refer to military actions as
"state-sponsored terrorism". Here's
an article which makes the
comparison very powerfully.
Now I am not sure where I stand on that question of terminology. Both
Israel and Hezbollah have planned and prepared these attacks for
years. Perhaps both should be added to the international list of
"terrorist organizations".
Jan Egeland of the UN says Hezbollah does commit "cowardly blending"
among civilians.
However, even if this were an excuse for Israeli air attacks, for many
of them it would be entirely inapplicable, as Robert Fisk's articles
show.
The ACLU is fighting a town in Missouri that wants to stop
an unmarried couple from living with their children in their own house.
Massachusetts residents: help the campaign for pharmacies to provide
emergency contraception.
UNHCR and MSF confirm that Israel's "secure corridors" for
humanitarian assistance in southern Lebanon are mere fiction;
the area is a free fire zone.
US troops in Kabul shot unarmed angry civilians, and then covered it
up.
I supported the invasion of Afghanistan to liberate that country from
the Taliban, and nearly all of Afghanistan seemed to support it too.
Probably most of Afghanistan still does, but a substantial fraction
now supports the Taliban. Where does that leave us?
Even under the best of circumstances, soldiers stationed in a foreign
country occasionally rape and kill civilians. The people of that
country will put up with such events if they regard the soldiers'
presence as vitally necessary to protect them. Otherwise, these
events generate hostility towards the soldiers, hostility which in
Afghanistan will be exploited by the Taliban.
There is no hope of defeating the Taliban except by defeating the
Taliban's campaign for support among the people of Afghanistan. And I
do not see any plan in motion which plausibly aims at doing so.
Mexico's court ordered a recount, but only for those 9% of polling
places for which evidence of fraud was specifically found. Lopez
Obrador's supporters intend to continue their massive protests
demanding a full recount.
Israel has destroyed all the bridges into southern Lebanon and refuses
safe-conduct for humanitarian aid. Red Cross aid convoys have been
attacked from the air.
Americans: Host a "Press for Truth" house party
to support the pressure for a real and thorough investigation
of what happened on 9/11.
Although Iraq is a desert, not a jungle, the Bush policies largely
follow the same path as Nixon followed in Vietnam.
Vietnamization failed as a way to win the Vietnam war, but Nixon did
not admit failure, and instead used it as an excuse to pull American
troops out. Two years later, as South Vietnam collapsed, few in the
US suggested sending them back. Thus, Vietnamization eventually
succeeded in ending the war. I hope that Iraqization succeeds
likewise.
One major difference between the two wars is that Iraqis are divided
into groups that are slaughtering each other with hatred. The
Vietnamese had no such divisions.
The forests of Indonesia are being cut so fast that the lowlands of
Sumatra and Borneo will be completely denuded in 4 years.
As exponential population growth reaches its limits,
the end can come very quickly.
How global warming makes itself felt today in North America.
The degree of warming projected in coming decades is much more than
has occurred so far. The effects so far are a small taste of what is
coming.
Fortunately, the increased growth of poison ivy may not go too far.
More CO2 in the air generally spurs plant growth; but, according to a
study I read about in Science News, the effect on plants in wild
settings is limited because they typically encounter some other
resource limit. They grow faster only temporarily.
Alas, this means we cannot expect increased plant growth to absorb the
carbon dioxide we produce.
A number of books cast light on aspects of the Bushmen's incompetence,
and their dishonesty, in the invasion of Iraq.
Arguments continue, among those who supported the invasion, about
"debaathification": some claim it was a disaster, while others claim
that not doing it was a disaster. I think that both arguments are
valid--that keeping the baathists in government was insupportable, and
that firing them was insupportable. There was, it seems, no path
between those two disasters.
The Iraqi government is too weak, even with Bush's support, to end the
civil war. Nobody in it has any stature. Most of the politicians in
it are sectarian, and associated with the militias that are fighting
it; hardly anyone rises above hatred for the other side.
I believe that division of Iraq, even if it is division into a mosaic
of neighborhoods within Baghdad, is the only way to end this war other
than through mass killing.
Bush tried to persuade Israel to attack Syria, but Israel refused,
say reports from Israel.
Uri Avnery: as Israel fails to win anything by attacking Lebanon,
it will begin the
War of the Generals.
Camerman Josh Wolf faces prison for contempt of court for refusing
to turn over his own unedited video footage of a protest.
I agree with the judge in this case: if we suppose an honest and
democratic state, it would be right, I think, to base the decision on
whether confidential sources' identity would be revealed.
At the same time, it could well be true that the government only wants
to make life difficult for dissidents. The Bush regime has on
occasion tried to claim that anyone opposing it is "helping
terrorists". If Josh Wolf thought that parts of his video would have
mainly been useful for that, I think he ought to have erased those
parts long ago, to make sure they would never cause such harm.
Israel has driven the Palestinian Authority government underground by
trying to arrest them all.
This is how Israel makes sure it has no partner to negotiate peace with.
A UK police investigation decided that a policeman shot Mr Kahar by
accident while breaking into his home at night without warning.
I have no faith in the honesty of that conclusion, since police
frequently lie about such things, and their buddies back them up.
However, even if it is true, it remains the case that they make such
accidents far more likely by not identifying themselves as police.
One of
Bush's ways to pay for the war: cut pay for air traffic
controllers, and harrass some into early retirement.
I don't object to automating the weather briefings, though; that is a
different issue.
Republican "welfare reform" makes it difficult for poor single mothers
to study to get a good job. Is this how they're protecting the family --
by keeping children poor?
The best way to keep welfare costs down is to make birth control and
abortion easy to get-- and offer good sex education classes which
don't aim for the sick goal of abstinence.
The Republican Party, which claims to support states' rights and
reduced federal government power, wants to allow the president to take
control of state national guard units without permission of state
governors.
Israeli bombing in Lebanon caused a large and damaging oil spill
which is causing its own disaster.
US environmental organizations tend not to confront the effects
of US population growth on the environment.
A British scientists says that some sort of rationing scheme for
carbon consumption is needed to halt global warming.
I agree that there should be stronger measures to reduce consumption,
but I don't see a need for rationing-- simply taxing fossil fuels
heavily ought to cut consumption more or less the same way, with much
less bureaucratic intrusion.
I can see one motive for having a limited rationing system as an
add-on: it might be desirable to give every person a limited quantity
of certain important commodities (such as gasoline) without the added
taxes, so as to reduce the impact of these taxes on the poor. This
would require rationing for those who participate in it-- but no one
would be required to buy anything that way.
However, I think it would be wiser simply to give poor who might need
to drive to work a sum of money sufficient to cover the cost of
gasoline for doing so. This way they have an incentive to try to get
to work in a more fuel-efficient way so they can spend that money on
something else.
Meanwhile, an electric company in Colorado is funding attempts to
pretend there is no global warming. It apparently worries attempts to
prevent global disaster might involve interference with its business.
THE BOMBS OF AUGUST: In Remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
with relation to the present day.
Creating districts that concentrate minority voters is a policy meant
to prevent their votes from being made irrelevant. But nowadays it
tends to have the opposite effect: it functions as
gerrymandering to help conservative candidates.
Uri Avnery compares Israel's war aims with likely prospects for the
outcome.
Iraqi gays are
fleeing rampant murder
which is not even illegal.
A Cuban dissident,
Oswaldo Paya, shows his patriotism by refusing to
support Washington's harsh policies towards Cuba-- nor the
privatization policies Washington wants to force onto Cuba.
Mr Paya is right that good health care does not substitute for
democracy and freedom to oppose the government. I hope that if Cuba
recovers the latter from Castro, it doesn't lose them both to
Washington afterward.
The idea that non-state-sponsored terrorists might poison
America's water is just speculation.
The military is really doing it.
US natural gas production is likely to start dropping soon. If the
decrease is large, it could lead to
conflict between Canada and the US.
The Bush regime claims Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, but
the EU won't go along, because there is no sign the claim is true.
One might well disagree with some of the aims of Hezbollah,
but that doesn't justify the label "terrorist".
Supporters of candidate Lopez Obrador have camped in the middle of
Mexico City as a protest, saying that that Bush-style fraud robbed
them of victory. They do not demand that the election be handed to
him, only that the votes be counted carefully.
The Somali Islamists (who aim to impose cruel Islamic law) are on the
verge of taking over all of Somalia, as their opposition, the "interim
government" which was supported mainly by foreign countries such as
the US, is collapsing.
Meanwhile,
a woman in Iran awaits a decision on whether to execute her
by stoning for committing adultery. They already have Islamic law.
Blair has begun to criticize Bush's Mideast position in public, but in
private he still supports Dubya 101%.
In effect, he has made a small apparent concession as a way to deflect
the pressure so he can continue his slavish support for Bush.
"Torture" Gonzales says
the Bush regime can hold Guantanamo prisoners forever, and wants congress
to allow the regime able to define crimes for military tribunals ad lib.
China censored a Tibetan activist's blogs. (Her poetry had already
been banned.)
People speak of AIPAC and similar organizations as the "Israel lobby"
or the "Jewish lobby", but those terms are misleading. It is really
the Israeli hawks lobby, opposing initiatives for peace no matter
where their origin, even if it is the Israeli government.
Human Rights Watch says Israel used cluster bombs on a village
in Lebanon. They
killed civilians hiding in their basements.
7% of US tax revenue is lost to cheating, mostly to rich taxpayers.
Bush has encouraged this cheating by cutting down on auditing of rich
taxpayers. He works for them, they want reduced taxes, so he will
give it to them by hook or by crook.
How
the right-wing political/media complex helps right-wing candidates
win elections: they can usually get away with blunders, but their opponents
are crucified for even the smallest misstep.
Human Rights Watch: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians
in Lebanon.
Israeli fighters attacked a hospital in Baalbek, Lebanon, hoping to
capture wounded Hezbollah fighters. For prisoner exchanges? But they
came up essentially empty handed.
A 70-mile stretch of Oregon coast has become a
"dead zone" where fish die. It is due to global warming.
A call by concerned SA Jews
The outgoing UK ambassador to Bush's
Iraq predicts more civil war, and division of the country.
Republicans are hoping to use a small increase in minimum wage
as an excuse to permanently cut the estate tax.
The bill is even worse than described above; it eliminates all minimum
wage for waiters in many states.
What the article says about a "reversal of roles" is pure hokum; it's
nothing new for the Democrats to oppose tax cuts for the rich, and no
shock they would continue to oppose them so even when an increase in
minimum wage for some workers is offered as an inducement.
Well-informed Liberal voters would find it entirely understandable --
but well-informed voters are the exception with the US media as they
are today. The Republicans plat to tell the voters, "Those Democrats
voted against a minimum wage increase", and expect the voters to be so
misinformed that they will fall for it.
'No Hezbollah Rockets Fired from Qana', say residents and Red Cross
workers.
Republican politicians depend on the support of religious nuts
that want to attack Iran so as to destroy the Earth. Literally!
Police in Philadelphia arrested
Neftaly Cruz for taking pictures
of an arrest that was occurring on a public street, on trumped-up accusations
of "conspiracy".
If the Philadelphia police department claims to respect human rights,
it should fire these policemen as an example to the others.
The marines accused of shooting civilians in their custody threatened
to kill another soldier if he told. What's more, the word about a
"competition for kills" is especially disturbing.
Iran's leading dissident Akbar Ganji refused to meet with Bush regime
officials while he visited the US. He said, "You cannot bring
democracy to a country by attacking it".
Iran has partial democracy: the people elect their government, within
a limited range of views. But it does not respect the human rights of
those with views outside that range, including their right to run for
office, or express them at all.
The full record of what happened in NORAD on 9/11/2001 has been
published.
They seem to have done their job as well as was possible with the few
fighter planes and old equipment that they had--except for two fighter
pilots, who screwed up and perhaps missed the chance to watch the
plane that hit the Pentagon. But even if they had been right on top
of it, they could not have done anything; these pilots were not
authorized to shoot.
It appears that the FAA took half an hour or more to tell NORAD
about each of the highjackings.
The NORAD tapes show no sign of Bush regime involvement in the
attacks, but this absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The
lack of authorization for fighter planes to shoot down hijacked planes
was enough to make anything NORAD might have done irrelevant. It is
possible that someone made sure they would not get this authorization
in time. It could also have happened innocently.
Diebold voting machines
hold two different programs. Diebold can
certify the machine using one of them, then steal the election by
switching to the other setting, then set it back-- and no one can
ever tell.
Several kinds of evidence point to fraud in Mexico's presidential election.
Candidate Lopez Obrador believes he won, but he demands only a careful
recount, and says he will abide by the results of that recount.
Nutrients from agricultural runoff are helping bacteria and jellyfish
kill off coral, fish, etc. in the ocean.
Scientists in the UK have rated various drugs in terms of the harm
they do to society. They
found that marijuana is less dangerous than
tobacco or alcohol.
The Bush forces
sent more Americans to Baghdad, saying this will check
the violence of the civil war that they have provoked.
When Sunnis regard Americans in the Bush forces as protectors, despite
all the murder and torture they have done, we can draw three
conclusions. First, that the civil war is horrible. Second, that
Iraqis are fools to fight each other instead of their common enemy.
Three, that this may have been part of the Bush forces' plan--as I
wondered a year or two ago.
Nothing could enable Bush to hold Iraq except to divide the Iraqis. I
am not in a position to know which aspects of the present situation
were specifically planned and arranged by the Bush forces, and which
ones occurred by accident, but it is clear they intentionally played
on and exacerbated Iraquis' preexisting hostilities. It is possible
that the death squads that have been murdering Sunnis for a year,
and appear to be part of the "Iraqi" police, were part of this plan.
I also wonder whether Zarqawi was encouraged by the Bush forces. What
could be more useful for Bush than to encourage Iraqi Sunnis to kill
Iraqi Shi'ites instead of the occupiers?
Put this together with the fact that the "bin Laden tapes" were just
ideal for helping Bush in US domestic politics, that Al Qa'ida was
started by the Pakistani ISI working with the US, and that the bin
Laden family has been friends with the Bush family for decades, and
one must wonder whether the cooperation and the plan go deeper.
This is another reason why there must be a thorough and independent
investigation of what led up to the 9/11 attacks-- one that makes sure
Bush & friends cannot conceal evidence of their possible involvement
in the name of government secrecy.
Bush and Blair propose to have NATO invade Lebanon
as a proxy for Israel.
The FDA has been totally corrupted from the top down by its
links with drug companies.
How can the children of the holocaust mete out the same
racist rage?
Although Bush said he wants to close Guantanamo prison, in fact he is
expanding it. What he said was probably pure lie.
Tom Hayden: I Was Israel's Dupe.
Bush is sabotaging the enforcement of civil rights laws
by selectively hiring right-wing lawyers to do the job.
The Bush regime
has been planning to invade Iran ever since 2001.
Global warming is responsible for record temperatures in Europe,
say scientists. It accompanies a drought, and together they
have damaged harvests.
Many US national parks are threatened by the effects of global warming.
Israel's foreign minister confirms what people had
concluded: that Bush and Blair were protecting their invasion of Lebanon.
Calling Blair "Bush's guide dog" is interesting. A guide dog is a servant
that helps a blind person get wherever he wants to go.
Senate Republicans, under strong pressure, agreed to investigate
the "intelligence failures" that led to the invasion of Iraq.
Now they are delaying the report.
A serious investigation would find that these errors were not
failures, but rather a deliberate plan to fabricate excuses for war.
The Republicans don't want to find that.
Since the Supreme Court ruled that Bush cannot imprison citizens
without due process,
Bush has proposed a law to authorize just that.
This law would allow the government to keep anyone in prison
indefinitely on mere suspicion of "aiding the enemy".
Since the worst enemy of the US is Dubya, this law would theoretically
allow anyone who works for or helps Dubya to be imprisoned. But I
doubt it will be used that way. I suspect it will be used to imprison
anyone who is rumored to know someone who knows someone thought to be
in Al Qa'ida. Or perhaps anyone who speaks in favor of the Iraqi
resistance or condemns Bush's war. Republican officials have already
called such conduct "aiding the enemy".
60% of the US has a drought.
While a single drought is not simply and directly caused by global
warming, we can be sure global warming will cause changes in rainfall
patterns, so that some areas will generally get more than they used
to, and others will generally get much less. Either way, the change
can cause big problems.
Israel claims to attack civilians because Hezbollah
fighters mingle with civilians; but they don't.
Bush and co. are trying to pass laws to save themselves
from capital punishment, which they could face under US law
for violating the Geneva Conventions.
I think it is wrong to execute criminals, even criminals
who have killed hundreds of thousands of people as Bush has.
Bush should be sentenced to life in prison, with Saddam Hussein
as his cellmate.
Chinese activist 'broke his own neck',
say the police who
systematically harrassed him before.
An agreement among businesses aims at limiting the cutting of the rain
forest to grow more soy beans.
However, such agreements are often undermined by cheating.
The
American Bar Association denounces Bush's use of signing statements
to disregard parts of laws.
Former Republican congressman McCloskey
calls for the defeat
of today's Republicans.
If they will allow votes against them to be counted, I think
they don't have a chance.
US politics today show
disturbing similarities to Germany in the 1920s.
However, the parallels are not complete; as far as I know, the Weimar
Republic did count the votes honestly.
Paul Bremer knew in advance that his shock-privatization
and imposed right-wing laws would make Iraqis angry.
This stimulated to the resistance, which could still defeat
Bush if only Iraqis will stop fighting each other.
Robert Fisk reports from an ambulance under Israeli air attack. Some
Lebanese are
now scared to have Red Cross ambulances near their homes,
because Israel might attack them.
A
proposed US law would require most schools and libraries to block
access to blogging and "social networking" sites.
There's one good side: this would protect students from being lured by
myspace.com into a dangerous liaison with the US military.
In the US, people are reported as "terrorist suspects"
just to fill quotas.
Israeli fighters bombarded Gaza with hundreds of shells, killing two
babies, and various other civilians, as well as Palestinian fighters.
Israel's attack on Lebanon
was planned more than a year ago. Israel
confirms this now, but the plan was discovered by Hezbollah, which
published it in June.
US citizens: sign the
Voters for Peace pledge.
Robert Fisk reports from Lebanon on the Israeli attacks that targeted
the well-marked UN observer post for a whole day, and the smart bombs
aimed at the red crosses on the top of ambulances.
The US and Russia signed a treaty to protect polar bears.
But since the main threat is due to melting polar ice,
it is not clear how the treaty could achieve its goal.
Tanya Reinhart:
Why Bush and Israel used the opportunity to start
a major war in Lebanon.
In Northern Europe, bees and the wildflowers they pollinate have
declined precipitously.
Big decreases in biodiversity are dangerous;
we never know which one might wipe us out.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon has resulted in heavy ground fighting.
Greg Palast speculates that the Bush regime and Iran share an
interest in nuclear worries that drive up the price oil.
WTO talks collapsed,
sparing poor countries further control
by the megacorporations.
Since Bush couldn't abolish the estate tax,
he now plans to facilitate
cheating on it.
While Bush rants about the (not entirely fictitious) danger of
possible future Iranian nuclear weapons, he hypocritically brushes over
Pakistani and Indian nuclear weapons production expansion plans.
Israel is using new weapons
to attack bomb shelters
which are full of refugees.
Israel attacked a UN base repeatedly for hours, ignoring UN complaints,
and eventually killed 4 UN observers. Kofi Annan went so far
as to say this was "apparently deliberate".
Those who are drunk on power sometimes practice visible cruelty
simply as a means of intimidation. Is that what happened here?
An ex-CIA officer says that the Bush regime is planning to send
troops to occupy Lebanon.
Israeli planes hit an ambulance in Lebanon with missile fire.
They have shot at others but missed them.
The response makes it clear that Israel has no plans to try to
avoid shooting at ambulances.
An unsafely run US railroad wants a government handout so it can
transport hazardous cargoes at high speed right past the Mayo Clinic.
It sounds like a comedy version of government corruption, but
corruption has gone so far in the US that it has become self-parody.
The US is supplying more bombs to Israel for attacking Lebanon.
Israel, Iran and the US:
Who Will be Blamed for Nuclear War?
The
Bush forces made a show of starting to "hand over control" to
Iraqi quislings
However, events have shown that neither of them has much control
over anything in Iraq.
As long as the "Iraqi government" cannot make its own decisions about
the privatization and laws that Bush imposed, it is not really the
Iraqi government.
The EU voted to fund stem cell research, overcoming resistance from
religious fanatics that believe little balls of human cells (which
have formed no organs) are sacred.
Parents now have a real reason to worry that their children
may make dangerous acquaintances on the Internet.
Gay activists in Latvia were attacked by a mob of bigots.
The police declined to protect them.
The excuse given for banning the Gay Pride march is instructive.
Since the marchers have no intention of attacking anyone,
the only possible "security" concern could be that bigots
might attack them. To deny people their rights because they
are threatened by bigots is itself an act of bigotry.
When Japanese officials go to the Yasukuni shrine,
just what are they celebrating?
Turkey's Kurdish insurgency is heating up again and
Turkey plans to
send troops into northern Iraq, defying Bush.
Bush continues to "fight" Islamic extremism
in ways that make it
stronger.
Where could this lead?
Unnamed "senior Iraqi officials" now recognize that it is
impossible
to prevent Iraq from breaking up.
The
second article shows how the Bush forces aggravate the civil war,
preventing the militias from protecting Sunni-Shi'ite dividing lines
in order to keep the violence down.
Bush cannot prevent the breakup of Iraq, but he can still make it
slower and bloodier.
How Israel "
minimizes civilian casualties": Step 1, order civilians
to flee their homes. Step 2, fire missiles at their cars.
Many of Earth's great rivers are running dry, due
directly or
indirectly to human activity.
The government of Pakistan is unable to shut down Islamic subversive
and terrorist activities, because they have too much popular support.
Afghanistan is close to anarchy, says a British general there.
I supported the war against the Taliban, but I have to admit that the results
have turned out very bad (although they looked better for a while). I am not
in a position to judge whether this outcome could have been avoided by sending
more reconstruction money after the war, money that in fact was diverted to
invading Iraq.
It was easy to defeat the Taliban in 2001-2002 because their oppressive rule
had made them unpopular. It is impossible to suppress the Taliban militarily
in areas where they have popular support. To he extent that this support comes
down to money from opium, this supports the Taliban only because the Afghan
government tries to forbid it.
Bush and Blair protected the Israeli offensive from UN interference.
The neocons that dominate Bush have a history of giving Israel unconditional
backing, which enables Israel to steal the Palestinians' land and
commit repeated war crimes.
100 Iraqis being killed each day, says UN. That's the equivalent of
one 9/11 attack each month, all caused directly or indirectly by Bush's
invasion of that country.
The Bush regime isn't satisfied with media concentration in America. Now the
FCC wants to increase it yet again.
Uri Avnery on the fighting in Lebanon (and Gaza).
The Bliar regime decided not to prosecute the police who shot Menezes.
The speaker of Iraq's parliament demanded that the Bush forces leave
Iraq, calling their occupation "butchery", and praised the Iraqi resistence.
Bush forces soldiers on trial for murdering Iraqis say they were ordered to
kill all young men.
Following such orders is no excuse-- but it means that the crime extends
further up.
Iraqi democracy will be meaningful if and when it kicks out the foreign occupation
force and their imposed privatization of their country's resources. The sad thing
is, Iraq may now be too far gone into civil war to survive as a united country no
matter what.
Papers from Columbus' trial show the tyranny and torture for which he
was tried.
Japan adds to the cruelty of the
death penalty by springing it as a surprise-- so that prisoners condemned
to death, and their families, fear each day that the execution will occur
that day.
Japan's war-time emperor left a memo condemning visits to the
Yasukuni Shrine. This undercuts the jingoistic campaign of Prime Minister
Koizumi and other politicians.
Soldiers in El Salvador shot protesting students, and attacked
journalists who took pictures of them.
Many states in the US have passed laws that hinder poor people
from voting, and block voter registration activities.
The Florida regulations appear to respond to a real problem. In 2004,
Republican groups were accused of tricking poor (probably Democratic)
voters by offering to help them register, then throwing their forms
away. These requirements, if they were enforced in such a case, could
dissuade such swindlers. But the regulations as written are much more
effective at stopping honest voter registration drives than at
stopping dishonest ones.
China
exports arms to many brutal governments: Burma, Sudan, Nepal,
etc.
The Senate proposes to give Bush unlimited spying powers,
effectively nullifying the Fourth Amendment.
The Bush regime wants to sells public forests to energy companies at a
low price.
The excuse, a shortage of money, is obvious bullshit. It's true that
the US government has tremendous deficits, but that is due to other
Bush regime policies (recall that the US government had a surplus
before the first time Bush stole an election). It's part of a
long-term policy of taking money (and public goods) from Americans and
giving them to business.
Humans are causing the biggest mass exctinction since the asteroid
that killed the dinosaurs.
Patrick Cockburn: Iraq's violence resembles that of Rwanda just before
the genocide.
Grassroots political organizations have outsourced their outreach
to corporations-- which turns them into
empty shells.
Electricity deregulation leads to power shortages, as if the ghost of
Ken Lay were still at work.
Note, however, that simply building enough reserve generating capacity
is no longer an isolated issue in a world threatened by global warming.
Soya beans are destroying the Amazon rain forest.
Neo-con see Israel's attacks as an opportunity to attack their enemies.
Neo-cons should become ordinary cons, and finally, some day, ex-cons.
The Indian government refuses to acknowledge ordering ISPs to block
access to major blog sites.
Police intervention in US schools, often cruel, violent, and unjust,
has turned them into a "pipeline to prison".
When I was young, there was a word for police that act like this. They
were called pigs.
The relatives of a Canadian family killed by Israeli fighters demand
an inquiry into the massacre.
US Gives Israel a
Blank Check to Wage War.
When civilians become targets:
The Israeli destruction of Lebanon and Gaza.
"
We are all part of an American society that continues to silently watch
as our government pursues a foreign policy that threatens the very future of
our democracy."
Meanwhile,
some Israelis are demonstrating for peace.
India has imposed censorship on the Internet, blocking access to sites
accused of promoting religious fanaticism.
Much of the ire has focused on the thousands of blogs that were censored as
"collateral damage" due to sharing a site with the intended target. Do not be
led astray by this side issue. Censorship is wrong even if it is done
carefully. State-imposed censorship of political views, even when they are
Muslim and Hindu fanatic views, even when they are Christian fanatic views held
by many supporters of Bush, is as much a threat to freedom as any
non-state-sponsored terrorist.
Italian spy chief faces sack over alleged role in CIA kidnapping.
Valerie Plame has sued Cheney and Rove for
destroying her career.
I predict they will give the court a run-around or in some other way prevent
her from having her case heard.
Why Israel Is Back in Gaza?
If Israel has the Right to Use Force in Self Defence, so do its
neighbours.
The Bliar regime plans to "attack organized crime" by imposing
punishments without a real trial.
I expect that most of the people that these punishments are imposed on will be
dissidents and organizers rather than mafiosi.
One side point stuck out for me: the quote, "We also know that financial
criminals are experts at exploiting and using information held by agencies
which is why we are focusing on improved date sharing."
In other words, if a criminal has a way to get data from agency XYZ, he will be
able to use it it to get all the data shared with agency XYZ by the agencies.
Just brilliant.
In Cynthia McKinney's election, Diebold voting machines refuse to properly
record their votes for her. (Her opponents' supporters have no trouble.)
The US evacuation of American civilians from Lebanon-- who have no connection
with Hezbollah-- is tacit acknowledgement that Israel is attacking
civilians.
How tobacco companies arrange to give the impression that they have
reformed, while still trying to encourage more people to smoke.
Global warming is causing mountains in the Alps to break up.
Some deaths have already resulted.
Terrorist bombings in Mumbai
have united Hindus and Moslems.
"Range voting" is
a new proposal for how to carry out
democratic elections.
Bliar says that terrorist attacks in Britain are "highly likely", and
has been saying so for a year. But there hasn't been an attack for a
year; therefore, retrospectively, we know this was not true for
the past year.
Occasional attacks may occur in the future--we cannot rule that
out--but occasional instances don't make a phenomenon "highly likely".
Or perhaps he just means that it is highly likely there will be at
least one more terrorist attack in Britain some day. If so,
I agree, but so what?
A congressional by-election was stolen in California by fiddling with
voting machines. The officials refuse to do a hand-recount. (Some
elections in Ohio were stolen, and reversed by hand recounts.)
Finally the Democratic Party has made a strong statement.
I applaud the statement, but if citizens want their votes to be
counted, they may need to take to the streets.
An Israeli bomb killed 9 Palestinian civilians. This attack, together
with others that have killed dozens (maybe over a hundred) Palestinian
civilians in recent months, is supposedly justified as a way to
discourage Palestinian missile attacks that have killed 5 Israelis in
5 years.
Hezbollah fighters, acting to support the Palestinains, attacked
Israeli fighters, killing and capturing some, Israel retaliated,
attacking roads and the Beirut airport, and killing dozens of Lebanese
civilians.
Hezbollah retaliated by attacking Israeli civilians.
Israel justifies its attacks on civilian infrastructure targets, such
as roads and airports and power stations, on the grounds that fighters
make use of them. I presume that the Israeli army uses oil refined in
Haifa, so it would be equally valid for whoever fired the missiles at
Haifa to say that they are aiming at the oil refinery there. But such
excuses don't carry moral weight when the likely victims are
civilians. I would expect that they don't carry any weight under the
Geneva Conventions either, and that the attacks of both sides are war
crimes.
Both sides ought to stop these attacks; but since Israel is the main
perpetrator, international efforts to end the fighting must focus on
Israel or they will be hypocritical.
The Taliban Use Beheadings And Beatings to Keep Afghanistan's Schools
Closed.
It is possible to defeat the Taliban only if the people of Afghanistan
oppose them enough to fight against them. So far the Taliban seem to
be gaining support; if Afghans want schools open, they don't want it
badly enough to fight the Taliban for it.
If the Taliban's strength comes from drug income, the only way to
defeat them is to
end prohibition and thus cut the profits made from
drugs.
Hollywood and the music factories (*) have
already used the DMCA to
kill off many kinds of consumer products. Now they want more laws to
kill off other kinds.
That article is weakened by the use of the propaganda terms "piracy"
and "protection", which are designed to irrationally evoke support for
the restrictions that the article seeks to oppose. See
Words to Avoid - Piracy
and Words
to Avoid -Protection.
(*) They call themselves the "music industry", which implies that they
are factories. They manufacture music, or what they call music, out of
money which they first convert into hype.
Google advertising is being used for a highly funded campaign to convince
you to accept RFID surveillance in your life.
Greg Palast:
Obrador shows what US democrats should have done
when Bush stole two elections.
Blair's chief fund-raiser has been arrested under anti-corruption laws
for the
loans-for-peerages scandal.
Iranians in exile have begun a
hunger strike on behalf of Iranian
political prisoners.
Putin told Bush: "We certainly would not want the same kind of democracy
as they have in Iraq".
Putin is validly criticized for not respecting human rights, such as
those of political opposition and dissidents. But when this criticism
comes from the US, it is laughable, given the nonsense Bush says about
Iraq.
From the quoted transcript, it occurred to me that Bush's final words
"Just wait" can be understood as a threat. "Just wait; we will give
you Iraqi 'democracy' by and by." I have not seen the video, and I am
not sure if this interpretation really fits. But I would not put this
past Bush.
The real aim (of Israel's attacks on Gaza and Lebanon).
It is often said by many Americans, who won't dare to admit that the
invasion of Iraq is a crime, that the Bush forces must remain in order
to "prevent civil war". Now open civil war is breaking out across
Baghdad.
It is horribly stupid for Iraqis to fight each other instead of their
common enemy.
The Bush forces admit they are losing control over violence
in Baghdad.
I think that they intentionally tried to play Sunnis and Shi'ites
against each other-- for example, recruiting Shi'ites for the army
and police to occupy Sunni areas-- but perhaps did not realize their
approach would lead to results such as these.
Israel has escalated its attacks on Beirut and the rest of Lebanon.
Israel is retaliating for Hezbolla's attacks which retaliated
for Israel's killing of dozens of Palestinians.
A town in Israel is in shock after a missile attack killed a civilian
woman. Casualties like these can be shocking because they are rare.
Magic mushrooms can induce mystical effects, study finds.
Prison labor in Louisiana: sheriffs exploit the prisoners, and it
keeps wages down for everyone else.
How curious that the furore over immigrant workers, and what they
might do to wages, doesn't extend to prisoner workers. Perhaps this
is the sign that this furore is part of a campaign that uses people's
economic anxieties for other ends.
Fallujans report how a Bush forces death squad came in helicopters to
kill a man and arrest his 13-year-old son. The son was mutilated by
their dogs.
Bush accepts the Geneva Conventions for prisoners in Guantanamo and
elsewhere.
However, when the Bush regime claims that its actions so far are
adequate to follow these conventions, it shows that it isn't really
going to obey them-- only pretend to do so.
Obrador presents
videos showing evidence of election fraud.
Russian police
cracked down on an anti-Putin conference operating in
parallel with the G8. Clearly Russia is no democracy now.
Israeli missiles
killed more civilians in Gaza.
In 1991, Iraq's people had a high standard of living, education,
health care--everything one might want except democracy and freedom.
Today they have none of these things, because the Bush invasion handed
over their country's wealth to US corporations.
Militarism and the Corporate Welfare State
Global warming will wipe out California wine.
Ethanol made from plants is
just a little less damaging to the environment
than gasoline. For real benefit, biodiesel is needed.
Pakistan has abolished one of its unjust Islamic laws, which denied
bail to women accused of crimes.
Even half a can of tuna per week can give you unsafe levels of mercury
if the tuna is from Ecuador. For other kinds of tuna, maybe one
can a week is safe, if your body is big enough.
Global warming is forgotten in this year's G8 agenda.
The FBI says it foiled a "plot to flood lower Manhattan".
Bombing the tunnels could have killed thousands, but if you really
want to flood lower Manhattan, you need more subtle means--such as
burning lots of oil for decades. Who's going to foil Bush's plot to
flood Manhattan?
Entire counties in the US have remained all-white, sometimes for over a
century, as the result of the violence of mobs of white racists.
Obrador
prepares to present evidence of vote fraud in Mexico's
election, demanding a recount.
A computer game presents Hugo Chavez as a tyrant and
appears designed
to accustom its users to the idea of an invasion of Venezuela.
A world survey shows that the
wealth of a society has little
to do with the happiness of its people.
Israeli human rights groups
went to court demanding the end
of the starvation of Gaza.
ppBritish Muslims have formed an organization to oppose Islamic
extremism.
It is good to oppose such extremism, but this organization should not
overlook the other threats to human rights in the UK, such as Bliar.
The Center for Constitutional Rights
reports on torture and violations
of human rights at Guantánamo Prison.
Escalating sectarian attacks in Iraq killed dozens of people.
Some Americans who can't bring themselves to advocate pulling the Bush
forces out of Iraq like to tell themselves that the Bush forces are
preventing all hell from breaking loose. But that is true only in a
short-term sense; in the long term, what they do is create the
pressure that makes things steadily worse.
Ury Avneri:
The One-Sided War
Hate groups are infiltrating the US military,
says the Southern
Poverty Law Center, which has fought the Ku Klux Klan and neonazis.
Italian government agents
face arrest for the CIA kidnaping
of an Egyptian who was sent to Egypt for torture.
It is amazing that conservatives dare to speak in favor of these
agents and what they did. If Osama bin Laden is happy because our
societies respect human rights, that is no reason to discard them.
Video declarations by the accused London suicide bombers make it
pretty certain that the bombing was done by them.
Some evidence seemed to cast doubt on that theory, including
indications that the bombs were below the floor of the train. If that
wasn't so, what is the explanation for that evidence? How can we
reconcile all the facts? A public investigation is still called for.
Health care in Basra has deteriorated to the point that children
die from easily curable diseases. Medicine is not available,
and doctors and nurses are afraid to go to work.
Basra is one of the stabler parts of Iraq. Things must be worse
in other cities.
Berlusconi faces new fraud charges
He has been saved before by the statute of limitations, which is
why he adopted a law reducing the allowable time for prosecution.
The European Parliament voted to demand information about
SWIFT's participation in US government spying.
Instead of being prosecuted for its crimes, Bush gave Boeing a deal
saying it can commit more crimes as long as its executives are not
involved.
A former prisoner tells of torture in secret US prisons.
China plans to fine news reports of "incidents" such as disasters and riots.
Supposedly the fines are to be imposed only if the report is false;
but journalists are rightly worried anyway. We can't rely on Chinese
courts to enforce this honestly.
A myth is circulating that building a car releases more CO2 than
driving the car. This myth is being used to dismiss plans to make
cars use less fuel.
Here's information that corrects the myth.
Notwithstanding this, I'd always rather live in a place where
I don't need to own a car.
Are Israeli lives worth more than Palestinian?
Palestinian land and water is worth quite a lot to businesses that export products and label them "made in Israel".
Churches convinced UK doctors to oppose assisted suicide.
It is not just the terminally ill who ought to have the right to help
dying. Some people are totally crippled by chronic diseases, and have
no reasonable prospect of anything to live for. Forcing them to go on
living is tantamount to torture. They ask for help in suicide from
relatives, doctors, lovers, whoever they are close to. Have a heart!
The status quo in the division of Palestine, which Olmert intends to
unilaterally make permanent, is the result of 30 years of robbery.
For instance, Israeli settlements have taken 3/4 of the water. They
use it for flower gardens, while Palestinians sometimes get no water
for weeks.
Ex-prisoners from Guantanamo now face imprisonment in France for guilt by association. The crime they are accused of is literally just
"association".
If prosecutors say in court that these men's relatives of these men
were convicted of crimes, that seems to violate their right to a fair trial.
Daniel Ellsberg calls on today's government flunkies to do as he did:
release to the public the secrets behind Bush's lies.
Bliar demands that British Muslims hand over the "extremists in their
midst", while doing nothing to address the causes of their
suspicions--let alone apologize for mistreatment of innocent people.
If I were in Britain, Muslim or not, and I had information that
suggested someone else might possibly be a terrorist, I would have to
think twice or more before telling the police. What if he were
innocent, and the police shot him without giving him a chance to
explain? What if he were convicted of the "crime" of possessing some
object that the court considered suspicious? If I had any doubts
about what I had seen, my duty would be to say nothing about it.
The UK government must recognize its responsibilities to respect
everyone's rights in order to win their support and cooperation.
Until it does, British Muslims should respond by demanding that the
police hand over the extremists in their midst.
French agents visited Guantanamo prison to question prisoners there.
In effect, they participated in the unjust imprisonment of various
people.
The mere fact that "associating with wrong-doers" is considered a
crime indicates a lack of respect for human rights on the part
of the French government.
Abramoff's relationship with Ashcroft.
A congressional committee has subpoena'd Rumsfeld, accusing the Pentagon of trying to suppress reports of torture in Abu Ghraib.
Caribbean waters have reached record temperatures two months before the usual annual peak. This threatens to kill all the coral reefs.
A bill to require chemical plants to improve security against
terrorist attacks is being blocked by conservative Senator Inhofe.
The Bush regime makes perverse choices of "security" measures because
its priority isn't reducing danger, but making its claim to "protect"
us appear justified. Measures that intrude on citizens' lives are
desirable; measures that inconvenience some businesses but won't be
seen by the public are not.
Police in Cali, Colombia, attacked and beat the people in a shanty
town, then set fire to their houses (with all their belongings inside)
and bulldozed what was left. A baby died in the attack. The
survivors remain homeless.
Lt Kendall-Smith, convicted of defying the illegal order to
participate in the occupation of Iraq was kept, for no stated reason,
in a maximum-security prison. But now he is in house arrest as he
appeals his conviction. He refuses to apologize or grant Bliar any
legitimacy. Three cheers!
A former Bush forces soldier faces charges of raping and murdering a young Iraqi girl.
The dynamics of an occupation in which the soldiers hate
the civilians produce such events, and even assiduous prosecution
can't eliminate them.
What the Israeli attacks on Gaza are doing to life there.
Schwarzenegger has set California's "anti-terrorist" office to
tracking anti-war political groups. The information they use
often comes from the Department of Homeland Security (Committee
for Public Safety).
Mike Ferner was arrested for wearing the wrong shirt
as he drank coffee in a V.A. Medical Center.
Terrorizing Gaza's children with sonic booms.
Presenting the occupation of Iraq as a "war" helps Bush dupe Americans
into supporting it.
The danger from terrorism is small compared with the danger of nuclear
annihilation during the cold war--but that doesn't stop Bush (and Blair)
from presenting it as a reason to abolish human rights.
The last remaining large group of tigers could be wiped out by a tide
power plant. This plant would provide only enough electricity for
15,000 homes-- a drop in the bucket.
The Iraqi army claims to have captured the man who bombed a famous
mosque a few months ago.
He may really be guilty, or he may have been tortured into confessing.
If he's guilty, I'm glad he has been caught.
When bombings of mosques (and other targets that have nothing to do
with the occupying forces) began in Iraq, many wondered who was really
behind them. It was clear that creating hostilities between Iraqi
groups could only help Bush. Disunity weakens the Iraqi resistance,
while intercommunal violence provides a retroactive excuse for
continuing the occupation. Were the Bush forces carrying out these
bombings as provocations?
There's some evidence for that. There is also a fair amount of
evidence that there really are Sunnis that hate Shi'ites, and Shi'ites
that hate Sunnis, enough to massacre them. This includes foreigners
associated with Al Qa'ida, such as Zarqawi.
So we have to ask: is Al Qa'ida once again working to keep Bush and
his nasty activities going? They help Al Qa'ida recruiting as nothing
else could.
There have been plenty of reasons to suspect some sort of hidden
cooperation, including the long-standing relationship between Bush and
the bin Ladens, including the way Bush let some bin Ladens leave the
US just after 9/11 when nobody else was allowed to fly in the US, and
including all the evidence that some in the Bush regime were complicit
in the 9/11 attacks.
And then there are the "bin Laden tapes", which seem to be designed to
help Bush. Even some CIA agents thought that's what they were meant
to do.
Israel's attack on Gaza will soon leave no food for the inhabitants --
and no clean water. Thousands could die from this. In response,
world governments timidly ask Israel to "exercise restraint".
Tibetan dissident to accuse Chinese of torture and genocide.
Opium eradication is producing the anger that fuels the Taliban.
In other words, the absurd "War on Drugs" may be responsible for the
victory of militant Islam in Afghanistan, in addition to all the other
harm that it does.
Addictive drugs can be harmful, but prohibition is not a good solution
to that problem.
Uri Avnery: Israel's present policy towards the Palestinians repeats
the British policy towards the Jews in Israel in 1946. Israel ought
to recognize that the Palestinians will not respond by surrender, any
more than the Jews did then.
Drug companies promote the use of drugs, for their own profit,
in ways that are medically unethical and corrupt the medical system.
The Bush regime says that 9/11 was the reason for illegal domestic
spying, but the plans were started months before.
So either the Bush regime is lying about the reason, or it was
planning for 9/11 in advance.
A Republican plan to gradually end farm subsidies turned into an even bigger subsidy.
Republicans are always torn between their ideology of the free market,
which would not allow subsidies to business, and the fact that they
work for business, which wants subsidies (and cites the "free market"
only when it suits them).
The UK office in charge of handling the Freedom of Information Act is
itself not obeying that law.
Bush wants to close the EPA's research libraries. That will foil
those meddlesome scientists!
Blair's campaign against human rights hit a setback; a court ruled
that the "control orders" (permanent house arrest without trial)
violate human rights.
Israel sent the air force to cut bridges and electricity in
Gaza--punishing the civilian population for a resistance attack on
soldiers.
The German occupiers of Europe used to shoot many civilians every time
the resistance killed a German soldier. Israel seems to be on the
path to behaving likewise.
This happens just as Hamas has signed on
to the imprisoned leaders' compromise, which includes agreeing to
recognize Israel.
In 2001, the Bush regime told the CIA not to investigate Khan Labs.
That is Pakistani the organization which sold a-bomb information to
various other countries.
Abramoff used a secret FBI document for his lobbying.
Haaretz: The Israeli government is losing its reason.
Alaska Supreme Court strikes down forced psychiatric drugging procedures.
The UN HCR criticized the UK for rejecting refugees' claims for asylum on spurious grounds, and for being racist about it.
US citizens: support Michael Berg's campaign for Congress.
The big drug companies claim they need patents even in poor countries
so they can get money for research; but they don't do much research
on the diseases that kill millions. The World Health Organization
is now working towards a new system for medical research.
The nastiest copyright law in Europe has been adopted by France.
The government used dirty maneuvers to force through the law
that Vivendi-Universal demanded.
Never buy media that you don't have the means to copy!
And never buy anything from Vivendi-Universal. The money
they get from you, they will use to attack your freedom.
The Bush regime has been tracking financial transactions world-wide,
and now that this has been revealed, Cheney is angry.
I have a feeling that their surveillance is not limited to real
terrorists.
Amnesty International: Israel's attacks on civilians are
war crimes.
British Bush forces are facing rising violence in Basra,
and cannot control it.
In Basra, people are developing multiple cancers at once.
Surely due to Dirty Uranium.
Did Bush and Choicepoint work together to try to steal the election in Mexico?
The Bush forces song 'Hadji Girl' expresses the hatred that
the occupying troops feel towards the Iraqis they are supposed
to be helping.
This hatred, which is justly reciprocated by Iraqis, is why
the Bush occupation of Iraq can only do harm.
Israel attacked the Palestinian prime minister's office, as well
as a school.
After Palestinian fighters killed some Israeli fighters and took one
prisoner, Israel retaliated with massive attacks against the civilian
population and its infrastructure, destroying bridges and the only
electric power plant in Gaza.
The Israeli government holds Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas government
"responsible" for the attack on Israeli soldiers. That is true, just
as the Israeli government is responsible for attacks that kill
Palestinian fighters and civilians.
Mahmoud Abbas points out, correctly, that attacking civilian targets
violates the Geneva Convention.
Meanwhile, Israel's arresting the Palestinian Authority ministers is
tantamount to a refusal to recognize the Palestinian Authority-- just
as Hamas expressed willingness to recognize Israel as part of a deal.
So now the situation is symmetrical: neither side recognizes the other.
The rest of the world should now pressure both sides alike.
Some Israelis protested the invasion of Gaza.
In a recent protest in London, on behalf of Gary McKinnon and reform
of the unjust extradition policy, the police ordered protestors to
"wear business dress". No protesting without a tie!
Here are quotes from the instructions that were posted
by Janis McKinnon.
The Spanish government took the side of the media companies
against its citizens, making peer-to-peer downloading illegal.
When a government makes laws to serve the megacorporations by
punishing the public, it betrays its own people, and becomes no better
than a satrap of those companies. These companies' regime may pretend
to be democratic, but it is designed to prevent the people from having
any real control over their laws. It is a dictatorship in disguise.
Massachusetts residents: collect signatures to put Jill Stein,
Green/Rainbow party candidate, on the ballot for Secretary of State.
The Republicans in the US Senate Committee on the Environment worked
with global warming deniers to try to discredit journalist Seth
Borenstein, based on twisting the facts of course.
The Profit: the Movie Scientology Won't Let You See
Tony Blair's 9-year stealth campaign to turn the UK into a "control state".
A year ago, the G8 promised a lot of aid to poor countries. They have
not kept the promises.
The US Supreme Court ruled that Bush cannot try certain Guantanamo prisoners in military kangaroo courts. However, this does not mean that the prisoners will ever have the chance for a fair trial, or that they will ever be freed.
The Irish police force, the Garda, have a history of killing prisoners, then lying about what happened. Here's what happened to Terence Wheelock.
Male homosexuality seems to be partly caused by events during
gestation, perhaps an immune reaction triggered by the gestation of
previous male siblings.
This does not mean that male homosexuality is genetic in the sense
that gay males have a special gene; but it could be that there is a
selective advantage to genes that tend to lead to a certain number of
gay males in a large family.
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[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-26 because the old link was broken.]
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