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The US is still preparing some sort of coup or destabilization in Venezuela.
2% of Iraqis regard the Bush forces as liberators. A larger percentage
support
Saddam Hussein.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator. Unfortunately, so is Bush.
Watching TV screens affects melatonin production,
which could lead to sleep difficulties and earlier puberty
[Reference updated on 2018-08-29 because the old link was broken.]
British journalist Peter Hounam has been banned from Israel after he spoke with Mordechai Vanunu.
Another article, which I don't know a usable URL for, reported that Hounam was going to testify before the Israeli Supreme Court, which will be hearing Vanunu's case. This ban is thus a way to exclude Hounam's testimony without admitting it.
Suspicious connections are coming out
between the perpetrators
of the March bombings in Madrid and the Spanish police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The second article in Spanish seems to say that the telephone number in the possession of Carmen Toro did not really belong to Sanchez Manzano, but rather to a policeman investigating the bombings, who has made a practice of giving out that false name to informers. But regardless of whether this phone number on a piece of paper proves anything, the fact that the police did not use their informers to prevent the bombings is suspicious.
When Iraqis distrust Bush-style corporate-run democracy,
they are following where Abraham Lincoln led.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Americans, do you want the Bush/Kerry brand of freedom, or Lincoln's?
Just as Bush was boasting that 2003 showed a decrease in terrorism, the State Department had to admit that the figures were wrong.
The UN, the EU, Russia and the US endorsed Sharon's document that
declares that peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine are
impossible.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Sharon's claim is that the Palestinian Authority is not sincere about aiming for peace. However, Israeli intelligence has verified that the claim is and was false.
More troops and aid are needed to maintain safety for the elections in Afghanistan.
Bangladesh has accused the leaders of an anti-poverty organization with trying to overthrow the government. What was the alleged plot? A large protest rally.
The Bangladesh government apparently regards political criticism as a crime. It isn't the first time. Author Taslima Nasrin was prosecuted for her books, which describe the mistreatment of the Hindu minority.
A CIA contractor is facing charges for killing a prisoner in Afghanistan.
Back-pressure like this is essential, but if we are to end the torture and killing of prisoners, we must also eliminate the pressure for abuse, pressure that comes straight from the top.
A military judge ruled that an accused torture-soldier's lawyers can question the generals in charge of the Bush forces in Iraq.
South Korea's government plans to go ahead with sending 3,000 more troops to Iraq, despite the threat to kill a South Korean hostage.
The government is right in refusing to withdraw troops because of a threat of violence. The right reason to withdraw South Korean troops from Iraq is that the invasion was a war of aggression, and Bush does not deserve their support. Koreans recognize this; when their government does not, it shows its true colors--it represents Bush, not the Korean people.
The British occupation of Iraq in 1917-1920 followed a course that holds lessons about the occupation today.
I read that the British troops fighting in Iraq in 1916 found that flies caused them lots of trouble. Too bad they didn't think of declaring Iraq a "no fly" zone.
A bipartisan group of US diplomats and generals have condemned
the Bush administration.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I take issue with one sentence in this statement: "No loyal American would question our ultimate right to act alone in our national interest." If this were limited specifically to defense against a real attack, I would agree; but the statement as made is too broad and not correct. There are forms of action, such as invading another country, which require more justification than mere "national interest".
The FBI
tried to subpoena reporter Declan McCullagh's notes
by calling him an internet service provider--and tried to gag
him about it, too.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
NAFTA is destroying US environmental regulations.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-29 because the old link was broken.]
The
Church of Scientology's drug-treatment activity is
running into trouble in California, because of pseudoscience
that probably comes from Scientology dogma.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli air and ground forces are carrying out continuous attacks against...olive trees.
2% of Iraqis regard the Bush forces as liberators. A larger
percentage (though not many) support Saddam Hussein.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Civil wars
threaten the lives of civilians in many countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Department of Homeland Security is working hard to keep America
safe from...immigrants who have smoked pot.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I have a few comments. First, note how they use the letter of the law as an excuse to crush individuals in despite of the spirit of the law.
Second, if there is another terrorist attack, the FBI and DHS will have worse things to answer for than misdirection of resources. The persistent refusal to investigate certain people, both before and after 9/11, is directly responsible. Sibel Edmonds is trying to tell us more.
When did higher-ups in the Bush forces know about torture in Iraq? A November 2003 Army report detailed many abuses of prisoners.
Paul Bremmer was informed in November 2003 (if not before).
[Reference updated on 2018-08-29 because the old link was broken.]
This article shows that torture practices were public knowledge in 2002.
Standing on the street, I saw a man walk by. As he walked away, I saw the sticker on his backpack: "Non-polluting vehicle." Seconds too late, I thought of responding to it: "No shit?"
Everyone who lives produces waste products, but some ways of living produce more than others. The US way of life produces the most of all, and uses the most resources of all.
Former Israeli soldiers who guarded settlers in the midst of the
Palestinian city of Hebron have
mounted an exhibit of the photos that show what the occupation is
like.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Organizers of the show who were questioned by the police say the
police are trying to intimidate them, not trying to punish or
prevent abuses against Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Scholars are trying to analyze the writing of the Koran, as they have analyzed the writing of the Jewish and Christian Bible, but they face the threat of suppression from governments of Islamic countries. It is not unusual for those who criticize Islam, even without opposing it, to be persecuted.
People should have a right to choose their religious beliefs, but respecting people's right to believe in a religion does not entail respecting the beliefs themselves. Nobody's beliefs are beyond criticism. Islamic attempts to suppress the human rights of critics or scholars should be condemned utterly.
Fahrenheit 911 is hardly available in some Republican areas of the US; reportedly the concentration of the cinema business plays a role in this.
The corporate media exert control at many levels over what ideas are expressed to the public in the US.
Attributed to the operator of oilempire.us:
The 2004 "election" features a plutocrat from the occult Skull and Bones secret society who supports police state legislation, a new gas pipeline from north Alaska, more troops to Iraq, the war in Columbia, nuclear power, delaying fuel efficiency improvements in cars until 2015 and opposes the Kyoto Treaty. And then we have the incumbent...
Bush's policy on torture and the Geneva Conventions has a precedent.
It's easy to say "Torture is justified because our country's survival is at stake." It's easy to say, because the people who say it are never called upon to prove it is true. They simply say it, and that's sufficient. This talk is as cheap, for the Bush administration, as Iraqi or American lives.
The Bush-appointed government in Iraq is asking for NATO training,
since it cannot get NATO troops. NATO should resist this form
of slippery inclusion in the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Biden accused Bush of creating a "security vacuum" by pulling back Bush forces troops. What he's referring to is an attempt to "Iraqize" the fighting so as to reduce the casualties among the occupiers.
In Vietnam, "Vietnamization" was the path that led to US withdrawal from the quagmire. Bush has lost the battle for Iraqis' hearts and minds, so only a permanent occupation force can keep the imposed government in place. Perhaps "Iraqization" will provide a face-saving way to withdraw the Bush forces from Iraq, and let the inevitable defeat occur.
When the Bush administration decided to attack Iraq, it
treated the danger of terrorism as secondary to maintainance of
imperial control. This is part of a larger pattern of priorities,
lasting for decades, and illuminated here by Noam Chomsky.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Al-Qaeda's Thumbs Up for Bush
Bush has backed down from his attempt to bully the UN into giving US soldiers immunity from war crimes prosecution in the International Criminal Court.
Bush likes to say that the US will prosecute anyone responsible for
war crimes. This list now includes Bush himself, since he signed a
document saying he can authorize torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
We will see if he is prosecuted in the US; if not, will the ICC get a chance at him?
Judge Bybee, who tried to excuse torture by redefining the word, ought to be impeached.
In May, Police in Providence, Rhode Island, harassed activist Peter Zendran, arrested him for no reason, lied to him, then imprisoned him in unhealthy conditions.
The fabricated charges were dropped in June by the court.
A
leading Russian anti-Nazi campaigner was murdered, as the
Nazi movement there grows.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Police in many countries have a pattern of disregarding violence committed by Nazi gangs, even up to the level of murder, unless it attracts public attention that forces them to crack down.
Houses used for making methamphetamine become toxic sites. This is
yet another aspect of the harm done by the war on drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-29 because the old link was broken.]
The UK is planning a stem-cell research complex,
which will do the medical research that Christian fanatics won't let the US
support.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
If these fanatics would rather die to protect embryos' cells, I would say "Go ahead, if you are really sure." But they want you and me to die for embryos too.
The
economic statistics of NAFTA, demonstrating how much
it has harmed most Americans, Mexicans, and Canadians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The same text as a nicely printable handout.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The result is that 1/5 of the children in the US are growing
up in poverty, and many Americans don't get enough to eat.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
More US teenagers smoke pot than tobacco. In ten years, tobacco use rates have gone down a lot, while pot use has gone up a little.
Since tobacco is addictive and marijuana basically isn't, the shift is a good thing in itself. More, it also shows that legalizing a drug and regulating it can be a better method of discouraging its use by teenagers than prohibition. It is neither wise nor just to impose the harsher prohibitions on the less dangerous drug.
Vote spoilage in US elections is targeted at blacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The 9/11 investigation affirmed the absence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qa'ida.
But Bush continues to defend those falsehoods--now by exaggerating "contacts" into "cooperation".
The US had contacts with the Soviet Union all through the cold war: the two countries had diplomatic relations the whole time, and starting in the 1960s there was a direct telephone line between their leaders (the famous "hot line"). It is clear that "contacts" between two organizations are not enough to conclude that both are responsible for whatever one of them does.
This latest Bush nonsense illustrates a general pattern in the behavior of today's antidemocratic rulers of ostensibly democratic countries: never admit a mistake, no matter how obvious it becomes. They figure that the right-wing mass media will support their lie, no matter how threadbare it becomes, and maybe they will fool enough people (or enough voting machines) to get elected anyway.
After a bomb killed Bush contract workers, some of whom were working on restoring electric supply, Iraqis cheered. Iraqis want their electricity supplies restored, but their anger at the Bush forces seems to be a stronger feeling.
Meanhwhile, the interim president and the Bush forces are
disagreeing
about who gets to set up shop in one of Saddam's large palaces.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Rumsfeld directly ordered the Bush forces in Iraq to conceal a prisoner from the ICRC, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Bush plans to violate them further, by holding thousands of prisoners without charges even after the war is officially over.
General Karpinski says her successor in charge of prisoners in Iraq, General Miller, said that the prisoners had no more rights than a dog.
The AMA opposed the FDA by endorsing nonprescription distribution of
emergency contraceptives (the three-mornings-later pill).
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli forces routinely torture Palestinians; a Supreme Court
decision that this is illegal it is more or less disregarded.
The policy is based on the dubious assumption that it
prevents terrorist attacks, but we know that is rarely possible.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Cory Doctorow spoke at Microsoft Research, trying to convince Microsoft to reject the idea of DRM.
While I think this speech is very well put, and I hope it convinces poeple, I also think it concedes certain points that we should not concede. It is an outrage to stop the public from copying and sharing published works, and that's why DRM is wrong.
Joke seen on the net:
The U.S. Postal Service created a stamp earlier this year with a picture of President Bush to honor his achievements while in office. However, it was found that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes. So the President established a blue ribbon commission to determine the reason for the defect.
After thorough testing, the commission published the following findings:
1. The stamp was found to be in perfect order.
2. There was nothing wrong with the adhesive.
3. People were just spitting on the wrong side.
Neoliberal economic policies in Mexico have reduced
wages, while poverty and inequality have increased.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
An Israeli/Palestinian joint protest stopped the wall
construction, at least for a time.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Invading Iraq undermined the fight against terrorism in three ways, says Richard Clarke. And that's not counting the way it encourages Al Qa'ida recruitment.
A seriously ill woman in Montana
tried to kill herself because she
couldn't get the only drug that relieves the pain of her illness:
marijuana. She was "saved", and now the state proposes to subject her
to a year of pain in prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
If I were in that situation, I'd consider it rational to make sure to kill myself rather than be imprisoned. I won't claim I have the courage to go through with this--it has not been tested yet--but this is what I hope I'd do.
The Institute for Food and Development Policy works against the
political and social systems that cause hunger.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree with their view on one sub-issue: population growth contributes to hunger and many other world problems (global warming, extinction of species, and resource exhaustion), so it deserves a strong focus. However, this doesn't reduce the importance of the Institute's own work.
Warning from US intelligence: Al Qa'ida may attack before the election...to keep Bush in power.
There would be precedent for such a thing. In 1980, the Iranian hostage-takers made a deal with Reagan to prevent Carter from getting the hostages back, so that Reagan would win the election. US leaders who talk tough, such as Reagan and Bush, often do this to distract attention from the "man behind the curtain". Even America's real enemies may recognize this.
Senator Hatch is
planning to ban file trading software--along with
VCRs, tape recorder, computers, and many other things. All in the name
of the War on Copying.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The long-predicted big jump in oil prices seems to be starting to arrive.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions is campaigning against laws like the USA PAT RIOT act.
British journalist Elena Lappin was arrested and deported in Los Angeles because she did not have a special journalist's visa. She was kept overnight in a cell designed for sleep deprivation and humiliation, in the spirit of Abu Ghraib.
The fact that prisoners are abused in this way even when they have nothing to do with any planned crime, when they are not even going to be interrogated, shows that cruelty has become a way of life which does not require any reason.
Government lawyers who sought to legitimize torture are criticized by
many legal scholars. One says they should face "professional
sanctions", which could mean disbarment. I hope so.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The UN resolution that authorized the occupation of Iraq
extended the immunity of Bush forces soldiers from war
crimes prosecution--especially sad given the crimes
they have committed.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
More recently I've heard that Bush want the Iraqi interim government to extend this immunity to contractors as well. Given that the Justice Department doesn't even bother asking for FBI investigations of crimes against humanity committed by contract torturers, this would mean they can get away with murder.
One good point in the UN resolution is that the interim government cannot make binding decisions that it would impose on a subsequent elected government. In that way, at least, the UN resisted handing Bush all of Iraq's oil. However, it remains to be seen whether "democratic elections" are limited to candidates that approve of the occupation, and therefore can't survive except as puppets of Bush.
Kurdish former MPs, who were imprisoned in Turkey for supporting rights for the Kurds, have now been freed--but the decision is not necessarily final.
The G8 summit's fascist security
precautions have taught the people of St Simon Island what Bush
really means.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
This article gives arguments and evidence that the fires in the World
Trade Center were not
capable of causing the collapse.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I am not knowledgeable enough to judge the validity of these arguments, but if the 9/11 investigation does not consider them carefully, it is bogus.
Nonviolent protests against the annexation wall continue, but Israeli forces are using new chemical weapons that knock people out.
Ken Okeefe, a nonviolent peace activist, was arrested trying to enter
Gaza to discuss
peace campaigns with Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
If Israel would like Palestinians to stop using violence, it should stop crushing nonviolent resistance with force.
Noam
Chomsky on Reagan's Legacy: Bush Has Resurrected "The Most
Extremist, Arrogant, Violent and Dangerous Elements" of Reagan's White
House.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Australian government paid no attention as Jack Roche repeatedly
offered to
become an informer in Al Qa'ida. After the 9/11 attacks, they
started listening, but only to punish him--not to accept his help in
catching anyone else.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
This was stupid, since anyone would have to be crazy to try to inform on Al Qa'ida now. Worse, it was unjust, since Roche did not commit any acts of terrorism and mainly tried to prevent them.
Women with drug problems or mental problems often end up in prison, which has the effect of causing suffering, but does not solve the problem. This article describes the UK, but I am pretty sure it is true in the US as well.
Sibel Edmonds, gagged FBI translator, says that there is an underground
organization that infiltrates the FBI, which her superiors
apparently know about and do not care to investigate.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
In and around Britain, species are moving north at up to 50km/year.
Some are moving
towards eventual extinction at the northern end of the island.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Ronald Reagan launched the modern period of corporate rule. Here's a
list of
his harmful achievements, some of which I did not know about, and
some I did not know he did.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Behind the smokescreen: tightening grip over the West Bank.
Bush has a pattern of talking about how much he supports something--then cutting its budget. This includes soldiers and veterans.
However, one statement in that article is a fundamental mistake. Budgets are the guts of government. "Who benefits?" and "who pays?" are the only serious questions.
Politics deals with others far more important than those two. Who is killed, and is it justified? What freedom do you have? Those are more important than "Who pays".
More of
Reagan's casty career.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
But the worst thing Reagan did was to sell America and the world a lie: that giving more power and a bigger share of society's production to the rich would increase growth and make everyone better off. "It's counterintuitive, but economics proves it's true", said Reaganomics.
Well, we tried it, and found that it was indeed voodoo economics. Reagan's predictions were Baloney. Reaganomics did lead to growth, but the rich kept all the increase for themselves, so there was no benefit for anyone else. Most Americans were no better off in the 90s than in 1980, and the poorest 20% became poorer. I have not seen figures lately, but I am sure that now it is even worse.
Bush administration
arguments for the legitimacy of torture contradict Bush
administration arguments in Supreme Court cases.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Hemp activists overcame the dirty tricks of the OSU administration to hold the largest Hemp Fest ever.
A phony abortion clinic, whose practice is to string women along till it is too late for them to get abortions, has been sued on behalf of its victims.
David Kay called Tony Blair "delusional" for continuing to pretend that Saddam's fictitious weapons of mass distruction will be found.
I disagree--I think Bliar is just an extremely stubborn liar. He figures that as long as he never admits doing anything wrong, he may get lucky and never get blamed for what he has done.
Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
The RIAA wants your fingerprints.
The only response is--DRM is theft!
MIT police arrested an activist who was handing out
leaflets on the street to people on their way to graduation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Merely arresting one person, and forcing three others to stop leafletting, is small compared with other police outrages. It is noteworthy because it was carried out by a university and because there was not even a shred of an excuse.
Foreign nurses and doctors in Libya have been sentenced to death for maliciously infecting children with HIV. An independent report said that the infections were the result of careless medical techniques.
There was no specific evidence against these accused except confessions that were tortured out of them. When the US criticized the use of torture, Libya responded, "Who are you to talk?"
The Bush regime published detailed accusations against Jose Padilla. If these accusations are true, they would be grounds to put him on trial. However, merely saying so is not grounds to imprison him without trial.
Without a trial we have no basis to assume these accusations are any more justified than the ones against Brandon Mayberry--and we know that the government will stick to false charges for years, merely to avoid admitting a mistake.
The Bush forces made a truce with al Sadr's forces, and agreed that
What the "war
on terror" really means.
The already rather conservative public radio and TV in the US are
under direct pressure from Bush
to become more conservative.
Israelis and Palestinians are now
protesting the wall in A-ram, effectively a suburb of Jerusalem
that will be cut off from it.
A review of the
career of Ronald Reagan.
How Reagan's campaign dealt with Iran,
to prevent President Carter from bringing back the hostages.
For this, and for later selling missiles to terrorists who were
kidnaping Americans, Reagan should have been tried for treason.
However, I won't go so far as to say "good riddance" because he has
died. I prefer to say, as Chicago Mayoral Candidate Washington said
of former Chicago Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad
he's gone." I just wish Reagan's policies were gone too.
When Reagan announced the doctor had told him he it he would be awake
and alert during his operation, I immediately thought of the old joke:
"Doc, will I be able to play the piano after this operation?"
Searing Uncertainty for
Iraqis Missing Loved Ones.
The ACLU is
suing to challenge the USA PAT RIOT act, specifically its
provisions for secret collection of information about individuals
without even a court order. The Bush regime tried to use the PAT RIOT
act to keep the case secretx.
Dubya's general policy is that the public should be kept out of all
important political decisions--the exact opposite of the spirit
of democracy.
The United Nations' top human rights official said that mistreatment
of prisoners by the Bush forces soldiers
could amount to war crimes.
However, if we evaluate the Bush regime by the standards of the
Nuremberg trials, it goes
further than that.
Granada is still holding political prisoners captured in the US
invasion of Granada, and given unfair trials paid for by the US
government.
This was before the US government got the idea of imprisoning
people with no trial.
Gerry Adams, now a member of the UK parliament, describes how he was
beaten and threatened, by police and soldiers, when he was arrested in
the 70s-- as part
of a systematic practice, surely authorized from above.
There were real terrorists and murderers in the IRA, and not all of
them were secretly working for the British government. However, this
cannot excuse a descent into torture.
I have never supported independence for Northern Ireland, which would
probably lead to making it part of the Irish Repbublic. I support the
majority there who do not want to be under the power of a government
that almost completely prohibits divorce and abortion. However, I do
not think the question of supporting or opposing the IRA's goals is
relevant to the question at hand.
The proposed UN resolution would call for the Bush forces to exit Iraq
by 2006. However, Iraqis want them
to leave now.
Bush says no one should "bet against" freedom in Iraq. That's because
he doesn't want you to make a bet you might win. The chances for
freedom in Iraq are small if the Bush forces leave, and zero while
they remain.
The FBI is
continuing to push a criminal case against art professor Steve
Kurtz, and has issued subpoenas to several other artist-dissidents
that work with him.
This could be a deliberate campaign to crush dissidents, and never mind
distorting the facts. The Bush administration has done that before
(look at the cases against Greenpeace and the animal rights
webmasters).
This could also be a mere mistake, followed by culpable unwillingness
to admit making a mistake. That behavior pattern is common among
governments, but the Bush regime takes it further than most.
The Prime Minister of Turkey (a long-time ally of Israel) has accused Israel
of practicing state-sponsored terrorism, equating the murder
practices of Israelis with those of Palestinians.
At the same time, he has clearly rejecting antisemitism,
which will make it harder for those who try to misrepresent
criticism of Israeli policies as antisemitism.
15 years after the massacres at Tien An Men square,
repression in China is becoming stricter, despite economic growth.
Businessmen looking for an excuse to avoid trade sanctions and do
business with a nasty regime like to argue that foreign trade brings freedom.
Clearly this cannot be relied on. China's economic growth
is due in no small measure to the fact that the US government has
ceased to pressure China on human rights. Since Clinton, the US
government's priority in dealing with China has nothing to do with
human rights; it is copyright enforcement, which mainly means more
income for a few corporations.
"Tien An Men" means gate of heavenly peace. Although the name is much
older than the massacre, it has become in effect a lie worthy of Bush himself.
To avoid repeating the lie, we can call it "Sha Xuesheng
Men", which means kill-students (The "x" is pronounced like
English sh, except with the tip of the tongue parallel to the top of
the mouth. The "sh" is pronounced like English sh, but with the
tongue curled a little back in the mouth.)
The
CIA's KUBARK interrogation manual--obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act.
The Bush campaign is trying to involve churches,
violating election laws and separation of church and state.
British American Tobacco is accused of planning to add sweet additives
to cigarettes as a
scheme to get children to smoke.
Whether or not these sweet additives would really increase smoking,
this shows how closely we need to keep watching the tobacco companies.
How the Bush administration persistently imposed its torture policies,
against objections at various levels.
A Parable for
Understanding 9/11
The World Bank supports oil development, supposedly to reduce poverty,
but a new study reports that the benefit
mainly goes to Halliburton.
Mexican police arrested protestors at a summit in Guadalajara, then beat
some of them, stripping others nude.
I wonder if the Mexican police learned some of these techniques from
Bush at the summit.
Bushido: the way
of the armchair warrior.
4 of Bush's Iraqi prison administrators have backgrounds of abusing
prisoners in their careers in state prisons in the US.
The abuse of prisoners in state prisons is no more a matter of a few
"bad apples" than the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. It results from the
general climate of "make them miserable, but never, ever help them"
that has nearly eliminated rehabilitation programs in prisons in the
US.
A Palestinian woman who was imprisoned in Israel says that
women prisoners are often raped, and photographs are used to
blackmail them afterards. (They could be killed by their families for
having been raped.)
When the Bush forces rape prisoners in Iraq, they are simply following
their teacher's example.
I've seen reports claiming that the photographs of men who were forced
to play kinky sex scenes are also meant for blackmailing them later.
The aspect of Arab culture that condemns women who have been raped (or
had love affairs) is entirely unforgiveable. Now this injustice makes
Arabs vulnerable to rape-blackmail tactics. I hope Iraqis will learn
to reject this injustice in their hearts, because they can no longer
afford the vulnerability.
Be that as it may, the facility of blackmailing Arab rape victims is
hardly an excuse for raping them.
The government of Ireland accepted
various corporations as "sponsors" for its term as president of
the European Union. They might as well hang out a sign, "Government
for sale to the highest bidder".
One of these sponsors was Microsoft. People suspect the Irish
government's attempt to ram through software idea patents without a
vote represents what Microsoft purchased with its money.
The
Marijuana Policy Project won a court ruling overturning the law
that banned federally supported transit systems from running paid
advertisements for legalization of marijuana.
After Arthur Andersen gave money to the Bush campaign, Bush let the
company move to Bermuda to avoid US taxes, and now gave
it a big contract.
The Iraqi governing council forced Bremer and Bush to accept a
president who has
criticized the Bush forces. He has asked the UN to give the Iraqi
government real sovereignty.
However, full sovereignty for the Iraqi government while Iraq is
occupied by the Bush forces is a recipe for Bush and Cheney to impose
"irrevocable" privatization deals, in effect stealing from Iraq for
the benefit of Halliburton etc. The Iraqi government should be a
caretaker, all of whose actions can be revoked by a government elected
after the end of the occupation.
When civilians in Iraq torture prisoners, the Justice Department is
supposed to tell the FBI to investigate.
But it has not done so--not even once.
Refuting the arguments for torture.
Robert Fisk: The
re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed.
Global warming is
causing rapid changes in the Arctic, affecting plants, animals and
people.
The Sudanese government continues
to support a campaign of violence against non-Muslims.
How did we get torture in Guantanamo? In October 2002, General Baccus,
who was in charge, was apparently
removed for being "too nice" to the prisoners. He was
scrupulously observing the requirements of the Geneva Convention.
Here's the article referred to, which criticized General Baccus for
being "too nice".
Note also how that article asserts that prisoners are there because of "actions"
of theirs--true perhaps for some, but false as we know in many cases.
The
A-to-Z of lies about Iraq.
The US major media are
applying a pronounced double standard to Bush and Kerry.
This isn't the first time--we saw it in action against Clinton too.
I find it peculiar that they should bother to do this against Kerry,
who is so close to Bush on most political issues (other than those
of right-wing Christian fundamentalist bigotry). It can't be a matter
of corporate domination, since both candidates support that. It could
be a matter of making sure their reporters are invited to White House
press conferences, but while I believe they would be nice to Bush for
that, I don't see why they would attack Kerry over that.
Can anyone figure out the mechanism behind this?
The Bush forces arrested an entire Iraqi town--well, only the males--
then came
back to destroy houses, as collective punishment.
Monsanto won part of its case in Canada against farmer Percy
Schmeiser, whose crop was polluted by Monsanto's artificial genes. But
this part may be enough for Monsanto's legal squad to terrorize
family farmers. Schmeiser doesn't have to pay damages, but the
seed lines he has saved for 50 years are ruined--and so is his
business.
Retired Staff Sargent Massey
talks about killing Iraqi civilians, including fleeing refugees and
peaceful protestors. He asks other soldiers who have retired from
the Bush forces to speak up and acknowledge what they all participated
in, so they can begin to heal, and so they can inform the public in
the US.
Too bad Colin Powell didn't do this after his Vietnam experience.
A US soldier says he was beaten in Guantanamo while playing prisoner
in a training session. He was
permanently injured and discharged as a result.
An added cruelty of imprisonment in the US: making the prisoners
pay for their loss of freedom.
Measures like these are a response to the high cost of imprisoning so
many Americans (a larger fraction of the population than in any other
country). Instead of making prisons cheaper to run, or squeezing money
out of prisoners' families. The solution is to stop imprisoning
people for unjust reasons--as in the War on Drugs and the War on
Copying.
Reeling from digital photos of torture activities, the Pentagon is trying
to stop soldiers from...having digital cameras.
Mohammad Mahjoub, who fled Egypt to Canada, explained how
his captors in Egypt tortured him.
Mahjoub was arrested in Canada in 2000 based on secret evidence and
has been imprisoned for four years without charges. Now Canada seeks
to deport him to Egypt, presumably so he will be tortured again.
At least in Canada he is getting a court hearing before he is deported.
Bush would send him there without a hearing, and call it "rendition".
British reporter Tara Sutton, after several visits to Fallujah,
reports on how the Bush forces built
up the hatred that spilled forth on March 31--and their
indiscriminate bombardment of civilians afterwards.
US troops were given permission to mistreat Afghan prisoners.
War Crimes: Was Afghanistan Worse?
The Bush forces are investigating reports that
soldiers have stolen from Iraqi civilians
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
It is proper to investigate, but theft by patrolling soldiers seems to
be a standard practice, and hardly ever will there be any evidence
except the testimony of the civilians in question. The word of a few
Iraqis will surely not be enough to convict a soldier.
The only way to prevent such theft was with a different attitude,
starting from the commanders and going all the way down.
In total,
there are now 91 investigations into "misconduct" of varying
degrees. However, unless these investigations and subsequent trials
are independent, they will tend to whitewash the offenses.
A court in Israel, before the reintroduction of torture for the
current intifadah, said: "The methods of
interrogation which are employed in any given regime are a faithful
mirror of the character of the entire regime."
Penology also offers
lessons about US torture practices.
Australian Mamdouh Habib was tortured in Guantanamo
prison for three months, according to his former cellmate.
How did soldiers in Guantanamo learn torture?
Uri Avnery: The strange creature named the Busharon is in serious trouble.
Amnesty International
accuses Israel of war crimes.
Scientific polls show that
most Iraqis want the Bush forces to leave immediately, but most US
journalists pretend it isn't so.
AP counts 1,361
Iraqis killed during April by the Bush forces.
One Bush forces helicopter pilot made a video of shooting a
wounded Iraqi.
Human rights groups report that Israel imprisons
and abuses Palestinian youths.
Evidence that the Bush
forces tortured Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel to death.
Manadel al-Jamadi was killed, then his body was kept for 3 months,
making an autopsy impossible. (This is a standard cover-up practice.)
His family was apparently
never told of his death.
Sadiq Zoman was merely
tortured into a permanent coma.
Prisoners released from Abu Ghraib prison report they were
beaten, injured, and saw another prisoner killed.
Cameraman Badraddin Baz survived two months of torture to
report.
The Bush forces also moved prisoners around so as to
hide them from the International Red Cross. (The practice of
moving prisoners for ulterior reasons is also reported in the US
federal prison system.)
"The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good
thing."
Clinton and Bush have allowed companies to ignore a law
limiting concentration of ownership in oil leasing. They have also
found ways to get around the law and make a mockery of it.
But when a company wants a law enforced, then our guardians of public
order become more energetic. (See the recent note about charging the
operators of an animal rights web site as "terrorists".)
A former CIA analyst urges Americans to be skeptical of
warnings of terrorist attacks based on so-called "credible
intelligence".
The torture practices used on prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba,
etc., were the result of CIA research which the CIA taught
to police and military in various undemocratic governments around the
world.
Let's not forget that many prisoners have been tortured
physically--beaten, raped, and even murdered.
Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower that Ashcroft has gagged, says the
current 9/11 investigation is inadequate. People tied to the 9/11
attacks were allowed to leave the US months after the attacks, while
hundreds of people arrested for hardly any reason languished in prison
without lawyers.
I have to wonder if the arrests of so many suspects in late 2001
were meant only as a distraction.
Opponents Predict Defeat for
CAFTA. Let's hope so!
The Bush forces reached a deal
with al Sadr; both to withdraw from Najaf.
This sudden reasonableness on the part of Bush is a step in the right
direction--a step towards ending the occupation of Iraq--but it
probably intended as a way to avoid taking any further steps.
Reducing the level of oppression in Iraq to the level as of February
will not make the occupation any more legitimate than it was in February.
Later news says that skirmishes in Kufa, near Najaf, are making it
uncertain that the deal will be carried out.
Bush has privatized
the data base of US government contracts, making it secret. This
facilitates corruption.
The Freedom of Information Act must be amended to include
all data maintained by companies on behalf of the government.
We must establish a principle that how a data base is maintained
has no effect on the public's right of access to it.
Enron traders
bragged about deception, and about "stealing" from California.
Using mercenaries to do soldiers' jobs not only hide casualties
from public view. It also encourages corruption and makes logistics
unreliable. If the US ever has a legitimate reason to fight a war,
that will hurt.
They also indirectly induce professional soldiers to leave the army,
cutting into its ranks. Of course, there is a plan for solving this
problem: the draft.
The activists that McDonald's sued for libel in the UK are now
taking the UK's libel laws to court.
Thousands of Italian
doctors were bribed by Glaxo to prescribe its products.
This is one example of a much broader web of big pharma
corruption which reaches into medical journals and scientific
research.
For almost 4 decades, Colin Powell
has made a career of killing civilians in wartime, and covering it
up. It started in Vietnam. Later he was involved in covering up
Reagan's arms sales to Iranian terrorists--and in arming Iraq at the
same time (while the two countries were at war).
Wasserman: Will
Bush Become America's Pinochet?
The Boston subways
plan to check ID of some passengers--supposedly to
as a security measure, but I suspect it is only effective for making
people feel watched. The article does not say what they will do to
passengers who do not have identification, but it makes me feel like
leaving mine behind.
Remember the hardship and fear caused by the forced cancellation of
various transatlantic flights last December, based on supposed
intelligence reports of a terrorist threat?
This article reports that Ridge already knew on December 23 that these
reports were false, but insisted on the cancellations anyway.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had a government honest enough that we
could trust it when it warns us?
Israeli tanks
killed peaceful protestors in Gaza a week ago. Israel
claims that the massacred protestors were armed and that they were
killed by warning shots. However, independent reports say this is
untrue.
The Bush forces are
taking hostages in Iraq: arresting relatives
of the people they really want to capture.
Remember how angry we were when Arabs were taking Americans hostage,
and how we condemned that? It is just as wrong when Americans do it.
A witness who told about torture in Abu Ghraib prison is being
punished for telling.
It's very bad when grandma marries a crook, but it is even worse when
she divorces the crook.
Albert Einstein published an essay in 1949 which clearly explains the
problems of Capitalism today--except that they have now become more
extreme.
The essay also recognizes the problems of Communism, as it then
existed.
Halliburton is charging the US government lots of money for
driving empty trucks back and forth in Iraq.
If you look at this with a nationalistic perspective, it might look
like cheating the government. But when you recognize that, under the
Bush/Cheney administration, the government's prime purpose is to feed
Halliburton, it is perfectly natural.
There are also accusastions that Halliburton staff
demand kickbacks from subcontractors.
Looked at narrowly, that might be an isolated case of corruption. But
just as Bush set the tone for soldiers around the world to torture
prisoners, Cheney set the tone for staff at Halliburton to cheat.
Specific evidence ties some kinds of torture in Iraq to
orders from certain generals.
When General Miller speaks of "setting the condition", those
vague words refer to specific acts of torture.
Bush was kept up to date about the torture accusations all along,
says Powell. (They started over a year ago.)
There are now 37 investigations of deaths of prisoners. But even when
these investigations conclude "it was murder" the killers get a slap
on the wrist.
Here's a report, attributed to DOD whistleblowers, of a
failed CIA
plan to plant weapons of mass distruction in Iraq, as well as steal
Saddam Hussein's riches.
I would not say I'm convinced this is true. Can anyone send
me more information, or confirmation?
The Bush regime has
arrested animal rights activists
and accused them of "terrorism"--for running a web site.
I do not agree with the animal rights movement; I eat meat, and I
strongly support medical research using animals. But when the
political rights of that movement are threatened, my rights and your
rights are threatened as well. Bush is the enemy of democracy, and he
has
attacked other protestors as well.
An
Israeli revenge raid made hundreds more people homeless in Gaza,
and there is now opposition in the Israeli cabinet.
Bush forces soldiers' testimony about an Iraqi killed during
interrogation, apparently by beating him on the head.
Bush still boasts of giving Iraq "an independent judiciary". But if
these Iraqi judges cannot free the Iraqis arrested as hostages
by the Bush forces,
what good are they?
Al Gore gave a speech holding Dubya directly responsible for the
torture and murder of prisoners in Iraq, for the increased danger of
terrorism due to the occupation of Iraq, for dealing with Chalabi, for
lying to start the war, and for seeking the goal of US domination of
the world.
The only part of the speech I did not like was the part that supports
Kerry. With his military background, I suppose Kerry won't tolerate
torturing prisoners, but he his general policy is to be even more
militaristic than Bush.
I was just in Ireland and picked up the book Stakeknife, which
describes the murderous activities of British Army agents in Northern
Ireland. The information comes from one of the soldiers in the
intelligence unit that ran the agents, who later turned whistleblower.
They had agents at high levels in both the IRA and the unionists, and
on both sides they were involved in killing. There were so many
agents that sometimes killings took place in which all the
participants were government agents. When government agent Nelson in
the UDF chose as his next target government agent Stakeknife in the
IRA, the army recommended another Catholic (this one not politically
active) to kill instead.
The murders took place in the 80s and early 90s, under the Tories, but
the Blair government made these crimes its own by trying to cover them
up. In 2000 a newspaper, the People, started to get at the story; its
editor was given two secret injunctions: one not to publish anything
about the security forces, and the other not to talk about the
injunctions.
Murders or no murders, secret censorship is tyrants' work, and
everyone involved in the issuance of such injunctions should have to
resign. I am not sure whether they would have required Blair's direct
authorization; perhaps people more familiar with the inside of the UK
government could tell me the answer to that.
Some US clothing retail companies are releasing reports about how
their products are made, as part of a campaign to
reduce sweatshop practices.
Was the video of the beheading of Nicholas Berg a fake?
When artist Steve Kurtz's wife died, the FBI arrested Kurtz, and seized
his computers, his equipment, and his wife's dead body as
"bioterrorism supplies".
The Bush/Blair draft UN resolution provides for a perpetual
occupation of Iraq. The supposedly-sovereign Iraqi government will
not be allowed to tell the occupying forces to leave.
This proposal is a recipe for perpetual occupation and resistance.
However, if the new Iraqi government has full sovereignty while the
occupation continues, that creates another danger: that it could make
irrevocable "agreements" with Bush about the oil or privatization,
which (supposedly) a future Iraqi government could not revoke.
Bush hopes that the Iraqi puppet government will help impose US-style
corporate-controlled trade, and the privatization that impoverishes.
Many of the US-imposed trade-restriction agreements require
software idea patents (see softwarepatents.co.uk for why they
are so dangerous to computer use).
Some in Washington are now trying to say that
Iran manipulated Bush into attacking Iraq, through Chalabi.
I don't know whether Chalabi was working with Iran. If he was, then
had the conquest of Iraq gone smoothly, Bush would probably have
excused or even praised those contacts as having helped. As it is,
they are the excuse to make Chalabi a scapegoat.
Chalabi is an opportunist, but the idea that he or anyone manipulated
an unwilling Bush into grabbing Iraq is absurd--like Dennis the Menace
claiming he was manipulated into reaching for the cookie jar. Chalabi
was useful to Bush because he said what Bush wanted to hear.
The pressure for voter-verified paper ballots is increasing in the US.
It looks like Bush has forced Jamaica to recognize the death squad
government of Haiti and expel Aristide
to South Africa. Meanwhile, Bush opposes an international
investigation of what occurred in Haiti.
Visiting Lori
Berenson
I've heard that some of the political prisoners in Peru were freed
after they got new trials, but it seems that not all the retrials are
truly independent of the previous kangaroo courts.
Book review:
The New Pearl Harbor
The Bush forces have held a New Zealander prisoner in Iraq for months,
fo r
no known reason, and did not give the NZ government any
information.
The Swedish government violated its own law by arresting two men and
sending them without a trial to Egypt, where they were later tortured.
They were asked to
do this by the Bush regime.
The people of Sweden should remove from office or employment everyone
who participated in carrying this out.
The lies used to excuse and minimize wholesale slaughter in Vietnam
are coming back
today for Iraq.
Bush is pressuring the Caribbean nations with threats of war,
demanding that they
accept the unelected Bush-installed
government of Haiti. But they insist on upholding democracy
even against US pressure.
When Bush speaks of trying to establish democracy in Iraq,
ask why he got rid of it in Haiti.
The Pentagon sticks to its stories about killings in Iraq
regardless
of contrary evidence--whether the victims are famous wedding singers,
or award-winning journalists, or whoever.
The Bush administration made contrary statements about whether
it respects the Geneva Conventions in Iraq, and is trying to
stretch the terms to strip many civilian prisoners of protection.
The lawyer for one of the accused Bush forces soldiers
says that
General Sanchez watched the abuse of prisoners.
How Bush Sr. and the Carlyle group are profiteering from Iraq.
The Iraqi government, to be created on June 30, will give immunity to
the Bush forces for their violence against Iraqis. Bush and the Iraqi
government will pretend that this is because they "invited" the Bush
forces to occupy Iraq.
I don't think many Iraqis will be fooled.
More facts emerge about the attack on the
wedding party, as the Bush forces continue to insist they were
attacking the resistance, but it looks like their description of the
attack is entirely untrue.
However, there are conflicting statements about whether the people at
the party fired into the air for celebration.
Dubya's lawyers warned of
possible war crimes prosecutions if he went ahead with some of his
plans for how to treat prisoners. His approach to the problem was to
make a "declaration" that the rules didn't apply to Taliban and Al
Qa'ida prisoners.
Such prosecutions should still be possible--because Dubya's saying the
rules don't apply doesn't make it so. The Nuremberg trials established
the principle that "I was following orders" is not a defense. "I was
following my own decision" is surely not a defense.
But this time, let's improve on Nuremberg by not using the death
penalty. Imprisoning Dubya for life will teach the world a more
constructive lesson than executing him.
Abuse of prisoners and killing of civilians are not the only sort of
war crime. Nazi leaders were also charged and convicted in Nuremberg
with the crime of aggressive war. Bush appears to be guilty of this
in Iraq, and probably in Haiti as well.
Diebold plans to move beyond eliminating paper ballots, and
eliminate paper voter rolls. So there will be nothing except a
computer to determine who's eligible to vote, count how many people
voted, etc.
Some selected Iraqi prisoners are being kept in small cells that the
International Red Cross calls inhumane.
This is being done under a special command that doesn't report to the
generals in control of the Bush forces in Iraq. This shows that the
abuse of prisoners is too broad to be their responsibility alone.
Israeli troops have started a plan to
demolish hundreds of houses in
Rafah, while making inconsistent statements about the plan.
We know that junk food companies promote bad and even specifically
dangerous eating habits with their ads. But this example
really wins the prize.
A new UN treaty
bans the use of a dozen long-lasting toxic chemicals,
but it will be a long time before the quantities already in the
environment cease to endanger the health of people and animals.
Torturing prisoners isn't limited to the US.
Farhat Kaya, a human rights campaigner in Turkey,
was arrested for providing legal help to those who oppose a new pipeline,
and
tortured afterwards.
He was
previously imprisoned simply for speaking of another imprisoned
Kurd, Mr. Ocalan, as "Mr" Ocalan (or rather the equivalent in
Turkish).
Regardless of what one thinks about the former activities of Mr
Ocalan, who led a Kurdish underground insurrection, to imprison
someone for making such a statement is trampling basic human rights.
Powell admits the goal of "handing over sovereignty" is "so it no
longer looks like an occupation".
Will this change anything?
Recently the Bush forces attacked a
wedding party in Iraq and killed 40 people
I am confident the Bush forces did not intend to kill people in a
wedding party. They are smart enough to recognize that the
consequences can only bad for them.
The Bush forces claim that the party was a group of resistance
fighters and opened fire first. As soon as I read that, I suspected
that people in the party had been firing in the air for celebration.
Maybe a frightened pilot honestly mistook that for enemy action.
Maybe erroneous intelligence reports told the Bush forces there was a
resistance group in that house. Maybe it really is one--most Iraqis
support the resistance more or less, according to recent polls. Pick
any house in Iraq, and it is probably involved in the resistance
somehow.
Clearly this occurrence involved some kind of bad luck, but it is part
of a larger pattern. At that level, this is not a matter of chance,
it is predictable and inevitable. Such things happen every day in an
occupation of a hostile population, which is why the occupation
inevitably makes Iraqis hate the Bush forces. Any puppet government
that depends on the Bush forces to stay in power will be continuing
the occupation, and the resistance will continue until it is
overthrown.
The computers we discard usually end up in poor countries such as
China, where people take them apart to recycle the valuable materials.
Recycling is useful, but with this method it is also poisonous, since
the computer parts release toxic substances into the air and water.
Many countries seem to fail to enforce the treaty that bans export
of hazardous waste. The US didn't even sign it.
The best way to recycle used computers is to install
GNU/Linux on them,
and give them to a poor country to use instead of burn.
The population of Easter Island wiped out the animals and trees that
their lives depended on, and crashed into starvation and war. They
did not look ahead to project the consequences of overusing the
resources they needed.
We could meet a similar fate.
In Russia, the war on drugs is being applied to veterinarians, who
face up to 15 years imprisonment for using the standard anesthetic
which is banned in Russia. What drugs are Russian prosecutors using?
Chalabi used to be a darling of the Bush forces, because
he told them about nonexistent Iraqi weapons which they used
as an excuse for war. But they have had a falling out, and
the Bush troops went to search his house.
It looks like Chalabi will say whatever is convenient in the
circumstances. This is the sort of person that is useful to Bush, and
that Bush discards when he ceases to be useful.
The General Accounting Office says that the Bush administration
illegally produced phony news reports in support of the Bush
medicare bill.
How the Portuguese dictatorship adapted and extended CIA torture methods.
(The CIA torture manual they used was declassified in 1997.)
Some US prisons
boast about how badly they treat prisoners.
Bush's failure to keep track of civilian casualties in Iraq
violates
the Geneva Conventions.
The
Amnesty International Report mentioned.
Specific evidence indicates that the video of Zarqawi and the
beheading of Nicholas Berg was a fake, actually filmed inside the
Bush-controlled Abu Ghraib prison.
There are rumors that Bush and Blair are looking for a way to
get
their troops out of Iraq. However, they are still trying to leave a
puppet government behind, which can't possibly work for long.
Perhaps they hope to prop it up until November so Bush can claim
"success" for the election.
I saw another article today saying that they are planning to give
Iraqi army units--under US command, of course--the option to decline
to fight particular battles, to gain UN approval for the plans. The
fact that this is even under discussion shows that what they are
considering is a puppet government. The UN should not authorize
anything remotely like this.
Starbucks workers in New York have unionized.
They are ill-paid, and overworked to the point where
the job causes physical pain.
Gay marriage has begun in Massachusetts.
Bush has
established a pattern of disregarding any and all
laws, constitutional requirements, and treaties that protect
human rights. Kerry will be tempted to continue this system.
One danger you face from this is that the US could
convince another country to send you to Syria to be tortured.
This is called "rendition". It is
described in this article
(not near the beginning).
Three Iraqi news reporters were
arrested and abused by the Bush forces
in January.
After accusations of abusing prisoners in Afghanistan (some of them to
death), the US Army says it will investigate--but
keep the results of
the investigation secret. The prisons themselves are secret too.
An
estimated 10,000 are held prisoner by the US outside US territory;
prisoners have been brought to Iraq from 21 other countries.
Secret prisons are inexcusable. To keep someone in prison is a
serious matter; the reasons, as well as the way the person is treated,
must stand up to scrutiny. The press must be given access to
check how prisoners are treated.
The claim that letting the press investigate the prisoners' claims
of abuse would be exploiting prisoners is the sort of absurd lie
that Bush is famous for.
Chinese ex-president Jiang Zemin is being sued the US for leading a
campaign of torture and murder. The Bush administration filed a brief
asking for the suit to be dismissed.
I guess leaders who preside over systems of torture and killing have
learned to stick up for each other.
John Negroponte, who is supposed to be US ambassador to the supposed
Iraqi government-to-be, presided over
US support and cooperation for torture by Battalion 316 in
Honduras. This article is based on interviews with victims and
with members of that battalion.
With over 2 million Americans in serving prison sentences, the large
prison population has
effects on society.
Reports of a person who encountered a DOD program to study the organization of peace-leaning US
organizations.
This fits in an interesting way the news that Rumsfeld has been trying
to have the DOD take over intelligence operations from the CIA.
A Newsweek article ties
high officials to torture decisions.
You might get the idea from this article that the Geneva Conventions
apply to only some of the people in a war zone. In fact they cover
everyone; there's no exception for "illegal combatants" (though they
can be charged with the crime of being such, and punished if
convicted). Taliban fighters were part of the army of the government
of Afghanistan, so they were legal combatants.
This article also seems to treat the use of torture by the CIA as
acceptable provided they keep it secret.
A prison manager who oversaw abuse of prisoners as a civilian in the
US was
chosen by Bush to run the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Bush was given
formal advice to consider the Geneva Convention
"obsolete". There is evidence connecting Rumsfeld directly
with torture practices.
Three mothers whose sons were killed by police in the US, having
committed no crimes, are
searching for justice, but finding that
the police tend not to be punished for this.
This is the tip of an iceberg of systematic police mistreatment of
certain racial groups.
Former marine
Staff Sgt Masset reports on the Iraqi civilians he
killed, how he concluded that the war was wrong, and how he was
punished for saying so.
The
use of "civilian" mercenaries as soldiers in Iraq has many
effects. It artificially reduces the military casualties figures by
failing to count these soldiers. It bypasses military laws against
torture and other things. It also raises a few soldiers'
pay--sometimes quite a lot.
There are reports that a
secret Pentagon program, established by
Rumsfeld to carry out torture on a few Al Qa'ida suspects, was in an
act of "stupidity" extended to include lots of Iraqis arrested for
whatever reason.
Extending the program in this way may have been stupid, but let's not
presume that torture is legitimate to use on Al Qa'ida suspects.
The abuse and contempt for lives of the occupied people
seen in Iraq have
precedents in previous US wars.
So do the tendencies not to punish the perpetrators very much,
and to deny the true scope of what has occurred.
A former Guantanamo prisoner
describes how he and others were tortured in an organized, systematic
way He says the staff made videos of everything. These videos
could be proof positive of organized systematic brutality.
Amnesty International lists
specific cases where Bush forces soldiers killed unarmed Iraqis
who were clearly no threat.
Considering how hard it is to get evidence in such cases, there must
be far more cases that could not be documented.
Thousands of people in Rafah are fleeing their homes, expecting
Israel to demolish them.
More information is available at
http://www.btselem.org .
The policy of supporting Israel no matter what it does, adopted by
both Bush and Kerry
makes it impossible for the US to sponsor peace negotiations between
Israel and Palestine.
Guards in the Bush forces set dogs on prisoners, raped them, etc.
Their behavior reflects the general attitude of Bush & Co--the Geneva
conventions are just words, get tough, etc.--which were the motive for
bypassing safeguards formerly established in the US Army to prevent
such things.
US-sponsored torture did not start in Iraq. The
training manuals used in the School of the Americas taught torture to
over 60,000 soldiers from Latin America.
It also taught the technique of taking someone's family members
hostage to put pressure on him or her. That policy too is being used
in Iraq.
In Colombia, the government which receives US funding through "Plan
Colombia" lets unofficial death squads implement a similar policy by
killing the relatives of union organizers
Human Rights Watch says US prisoners in
Afghanistan are being abused.
Even the FBI stays away from CIA interrogations for fear they are
illegal. The British
learned the techniques from North Korean and Chinese "brainwashing"
that they applied to prisoners in the Korean War.
Innocent-sounding labels such as "stress positions" stand for torture
that over time causes permanent physical injury. Other forms of abuse
not named in that story can also cause injury or even death--for
instance, keeping people in small rooms for a long time, or kicking
them, or denying them medical care when they are sick.
It is especially ironic that, while the Bush forces in Iraq were
brutalizing Iraqi prisoners, including people who were arrested for no
reason, Bush has been
bragging over and over that his invasion had saved Iraqis from such
mistreatment.
After battles in Gaza in which Palestinians killed Israeli soldiers,
Israeli forces took revenge on the helpless, by
demolishing 88 buildings and leaving 1000 people homeless.
Torture practices in Iraq my trace back to practices used by the
UK against IRA suspects in the 1970s.
Why all of a sudden are Americans outraged about torture in Iraq,
after ignoring
so many cruelties?
Specific news about Iraqis who were arrested and tortured by the Bush
forces, and one of them killed, was
published in February in London. But America did not pay
attention--perhaps because there were no pictures.
The RIAA doesn't officially have the status of a police force, but its
unofficial
police have learned to respect people's rights as much as real
police.
The U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. Act, enacted in folly after the Sepember 11
attacks,
parallels a law enacted after another attack which cut away legal
rights in another country.
Evidence is appearing that one specific Iraqi prisoner was tortured and
killed by the Bush forces. His death certificate was falsified.
The fact that Iraqi pathologists are prohibited from checking what the
Bush forces say is the most significant thing here, because it is a
systematic policy with no other likely purpose but to cover up
torture. Who gave the order for that?
UK police
used a fake "security threat" as an excuse to arrest a peaceful
solitary protestor on a permanent vigil.
He was charged with assaulting an officer, though he was the only one
injured and it seems more likely that the officers attacked him.
Bush is deploying an expensive missile defense system which, as the
Union of Concerned Scientists points out,
is so easy to fool that even North Korea could do it. If the
system leads a US president to believe the US is safe from missile
attacks, it could indirectly do great harm.
I don't object to missile defense in theory, if it can be done
effectively and cheaply. However, looking at the real systems, I
think they make no sense except as ways to funnel taxpayers' money to
certain companies and provide an
excuse to cut social spending.
India used a low-tech electronic vote counting system that
avoids some of the dangers of US computerized voting machines
through the inflexibility of its circuitry.
Rancid from Top to Bottom: Green Lights for
Torture.
A Seattle high school student was questioned for
drawing cartoons criticizing Bush.
The school representatives say they were "concerned about violence".
That is balderdash: a cartoon is not violence, just a depiction of
violence. If they are concerned about violence, they should question
Bush about the Iraqis and Colombians he has killed.
I hope the student speaks up with pride to identify himself.
Pictures of prisoner humiliation published by the Daily Mirror
in London
turn out to have been faked.
The fact that these particular photos were faked does not really
change anything, in my opinion, given that we have plenty other
evidence that the practice of abuse and killing of prisoners in Iraq
is real.
To build democracy in Iraq, how about
listening to what Iraqis want?
A UN tribunal has indicted General Wiranto of Indonesia for war crimes
in the massacres at the end of the Indonesian occupation of East
Timor. Wiranto may
nonetheless be the next president of Indonesia.
Brutality begins at home, as torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq
mirrors common practices in US prisons. The guards and police who
attack helpless prisoners are more often rewarded than punished.
There is reason to doubt the official Bush story about Nick Berg,
and also about al-Zarqawi, whose actions seem tailor-made to
help Bush justify his position.
The CIA has a
decades-long involvement with torture, including
research into innovative torture techniques. Prisons in the US also
frequently subject prisoners to abuse as a matter of intentional
policy.
Tragic killings
claim noncombatant Israeli and Palestinian lives,
but the world media don't give them equal attention.
A Halliburton subcontractor is forcing Indian workers to work 18 hours
a day in
conditions like third-world sweatshops.
These workers were lured with the sort of lies typical of those who
recruit girls for forced-prostitution operations. I think this is a
symptom of the general attitude of arrogance in the management of many
companies.
The Israeli soldier
accused of shooting peace activist Tom Hurndall
says he was pressured to confess; but he is not charged with murder,
even though the shooting was clearly intended to kill. Hurndall's
mother says that the orders given to the soldier and the superiors
who gave it must also be investigated.
Amnesty International says that British troops in the Bush forces have
killed many unarmed Iraqis in unjustifiable circumstances but that the
investigations--when they happen at all--are inadequate. In general,
the Bush forces are failing to investigate killings.
Dubya liked to talk about being the "education president".
Here are the facts about how his actions fall short.
An FAA manager
destroyed taped evidence provided by air traffic
controllers on September 11. Such a bizarre action is suspicious.
As the US uses "aid workers" for intelligence gathering,
aid workers
are starting to be targeted by the enemies of the US.
Remember how the original Iraq weapons inspectors were kicked out
after it turned out that the US had been using them for miscellaneous
spying?
Iraq-style practices of torture, and others, are
widespread throughout
a system of US-run prisons operated in many countries to deny the
prisoners the benefit of US law. Prisoners are handed over between
countries in violation of their legal rights; US agents hand prisoners
over to Egypt and Morocco. which can torture them more than US agents
will do.
You might think that it is exaggeration to describe loud music as a
form of torture--but even at the levels young people voluntarily
listen to, it causes permanent injury to hearing. The torturers
probably make it much louder than that.
The
logic of wars of conquest and occupation: even when it becomes
clear the invaders cannot win, the leaders can't admit the war was a
mistake, so they drag it out at the expense of even more deaths.
Dubya's recent
fulsome praise of Rumsfeld is an illustration of this
pattern. The more Rumsfeld comes under attack, the more strongly Bush
has to praise him, because he can never admit a mistake.
Monsanto has
given up on Roundup Ready genetically modified wheat.
Meanwhile,
genetically modified maize is causing problems because its
pollen spreads. In the past, a farmer in Canada was sued because his
corn had patented genes which had spread into his field. Now
a new problem is appearing: insects are becoming resistant to the
new maize. It may not remain effective for long.
I don't think the idea of genetic engineering of foods is inherently
monstruous. The domestication of plants and animals is itself a slow
method of genetically engineering them. More advanced methods of
genetical engineering could have very useful results, some day.
However, corporate-controlled genetic engineering is dangerous. The
tendency of today's multinational corporations is to disregard dangers
and suppress reports about them, while rushing for a profit. When
corporations fund studies of the effects of their products, those
studies are biased and untrustworthy. And the genetic engineering the
corporations do is designed to boost their profits and keep farmers in
a state of dependence, not designed to serve public needs.
RAND concluded that Bush went
much too far
in removing data from the web after September 11,
because almost all of the removals were ineffective
and irrelevant to preventing terrorism.
The
dossier of dirty tricks used by the Irish government and police to
suppress democracy.
Charles Graner, a Bush forces soldier accused of torture, may have had
prior
experience during his career as a prison guard.
Graner says he was following the orders when carrying out torture.
Other evidence argues that that is true--but his experience probably
made him a ready assistant.
The Israeli Army violently
attacked a protest of women simply carrying posters.
The Israeli regime now considers any form of dissent as a threat if it
is effective, and meets any effective protest with violence, no
matter how peaceful it was.
The Israeli government has been funding construction of illegal
outposts: new settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law.
This is one of many examples showing that the Israeli government has
reached a point where laws are just window dressing. Laws are meant
to restrain government actions and thus protect human rights. When
the government doesn't respect its own laws, no human rights are safe,
and everyone's situation depends on the whim of those in power.
Police pounced on a Critical Mass rally in Montreal and arrested some of
the cyclists. (A Critical Mass rally consists of lots of people
riding bicycles.)
Castro criticized the presidents of Mexico and Peru, accusing them
of bowing to the US and to multinational corporations.
Castro is a dictator, and does not give the people a voice in the
government. The multinational corporations, in the countries that
they dominate, don't give the people a voice either.
The Golem Turns on his Creator.
RAWA protests
against fundamentalists in the Afghan government.
The Israeli government is pressuring Ben Gurion University to fire or
gag Professor Lev Grinberg, after his article criticizing Israeli
assassination policy was falsely
described by an Israeli newspaper as "antisemitism".
The tyrannical policies directed by the occupation at
Palestinians inevitably change the character of the Israeli
state and institutions--and Israelis cannot escape being
victims as well as Palestinians.
The Irish police banned a protest march at the last minute, after a
long campaign of disinformation claiming that protestors were planning
violence. As usual, it was the police who were planning violence;
they attacked peaceful protesters the next day, in an orderly way
suggesting it was explicitly decided by the police commanders.
Although some of the protesters were seriously injured, none of the
police were arrested. But the Irish media are paying no attention.
Together, the government, police, and media have turned into a lie
machine.
Police in Israel beat up
Palestinian prisoners in a courtroom for waving and speaking to
their family members at the other side of the courtroom.
The police described the people they attacked as "terrorists who
started a riot". They have become so used to lying that it is second
nature--truth means nothing to them. Israelis may think that this is
only done to Palestinians or dissidents, but they must not feel safe.
When police become accustomed to barefaced lying, nobody is safe.
The CIA used a US consulate in Saudi Arabia to let
many suspicious characters into the US --according to the State
Department employee who complained because he found it
suspicious. Many of the accused 9/11 hijackers got their visas through
that consulate.
The forms of sexual humiliation used against prisoners in Iraq
seem to be derived from "resistance to interrogation" training, used
to teach some soldiers in the US and UK how to resist such treatment
if they are captured. It looks like some soliers who remembered
this training taught reservists and others who had never experienced
it to use those same techniques on real prisoners.
The killing and injuring of prisoners in Iraq, which also occurs, is
not part of the "resistance to interrogation" training.
The employers of contract torturers in Iraq have heard
no complaints from the Bush forces about this practice.
Here is a list of What Republicans
Believe.
Mr Abd, a prisoner in Iraq, describes how he and
his fellow prisoners were abused and injured by the Bush forces.
Those who ask for patience now in Iraq are
precisely those who had none a year ago.
While this article is right about what it would take to really have a
chance of introducing freedom and democracy to Iraq, we should refuse
to be led into believing that Bush seriously intended to do this. This
was a false excuse, just as nuclear weapons and Al Qa'ida connections
were false excuses.
The Bush forces
burst into a meeting of local leaders in an Iraqi human rights
organization in Hillah. While they had everyone under arrest, they
shot two of the meeting participants in cold blood.
Shooting people in custody is clear abuse of power, and ought to be
part of the investigation of the mistreatment of prisoners.
Meanwhile, one can hardly be surprised, let alone criticize, if the
followers of the murdered sheikhs respond to these killings by
killing. They have no basis to expect justice any other way.
Dozens of killings of prisoners in Bush forces custody in Iraq
are being investigated. But even when soldiers are convicted
for this, they tend to get small punishments.
People are focusing attention on cruel forms of humiliation, such as
making prisoners masturbate and photographing them. But we shouldn't
let these kinky behaviors distract us from the fact that prisoners are
also being killed and physically injured by their captors.
Families of prisoners killed in Iraq have launched
lawsuits in the UK against the government.
Some of the victims of the 2002 massacre in Gujarat, India, were
visiting from the UK. They have launched a legal campaign against the
politicians who planned the massacre.
The CIA says it is
investigating why an Iraqi prisoner died after interrogation. It
appears that rules were circumvented to facilitate use of torture in
Iraq.
50 former US diplomats have sent Bush a letter criticizing
his acceptance of Israeli annexation plans, and the disdain for
years of diplomatic efforts for peace implied by that act.
The Bush administration has been actively trying to
legitimize
torture ever since 9/11, and the campaign continues.
This is the best explanation I've seen tying the torture practices in
Iraq to the Bush administration's high-level policies, and also
demonstrating with a specific example how this has fortified
the Iraqi resistance.
The abuse and beating of prisoners in Abu Ghraib is just a small
part of a
larger picture of violence towards Iraqi civilians.
The Yes Men hit the Heritage Foundation, sending "supporters"
to their meeting to subtly mock them by pretending to agree.
In elections in the US, many ballots do not get counted,
and this includes a
strangely high percentage of ballots
cast by Black voters.
The US government
objects to a European plan to test chemicals for
safety.
Sgt Frederick
kept a diary which describes many forms of
cruelty and injury to prisoners in Iraq.
I don't think this information excuses what Frederick did, but if the
statements are true, they show that numerous others from various
agencies participated in the torture. They should also be accused.
British troops in the Bush forces
also brutalize prisoners. Soldiers
provided photographs, and said this happens often.
Recent refugees from Falluja say the Bush forces were bombarding
residential areas indiscriminately.
California has banned electronic voting machines
that collect votes in unverifiable ways.
Mexico city is sinking, physically, due to the exhaustion of the water
in the land under it. These problems are ultimately due to
overpopulation, and are likely to spread to many other areas.
Bush is
shocked to find that his soldiers tortured prisoners, but does he
really intend to put an end to the practice?
I was not surprised to hear that the Bush forces were torturing
Iraqis. It's normal for an occupying army to get tougher and tougher
when the conquered population turns out not inclined to love its
conquerors. Torture also follows a long US tradition. Remember the
School of the Americas, which taught officers from other countries how
to torture political prisoners and how to murder dissidents. After
public protest, they changed its name, but apparently not its mission.
In addition, Americans and British have been taught to hate and
despise Arabs. And until the news started to leak and embarrass them,
officers did not
really care much about what their men had done.
Bush forces speak of a deal where Falluja would be controlled by Iraqi
forces
led by a former general of Saddam Hussein.
That might work in Falluja, but since the Iraqi resistance has spread
to many areas of the country, a broader solution is needed.
Perhaps Bush's next step will be to put Saddam Hussein in charge of
Iraq. He certainly knows how to keep Iraq under control--and will
probably kill fewer Iraqis than the Bush forces have been killing.
The US government supported Hussein before, so why not again? Bush
only has to teach Americans to forget that Hussein was ever labeled an
enemy.
A Year from "Mission Accomplished", Iraqis celebrate
when Bush forces are defeated. This is not by accident, it is
because of how the occupation works.
Italy's most famous TV journalist has quit, condemning Berlusconi for trying to
bias the public TV there.
Another story, which is not available in a place I can stably link to,
reported that Berlusconi objected when she referred to the Bush forces
in Iraq as an "occupation force" and resistance to them as "Iraqi
resistance". Berlusconi wanted her to call them "the coalition
bringing liberty and democracy to Iraq" and "rebels".
The Irish government banned a
large protest march at the last minute, after a campaign of lies
designed to pretend that violence was planned by someone other than
the police.
(More recently I've heard that the march took place anyway, that the
protest was peaceful, but the police attacked the protestors anyway.
I will post information when I find a good article to reference.)
The Iraqi resistance has helped other kinds
of resistance to US and corporate power in other parts of the
world.
Polls in Iraq show clearly that
Iraqis view the Bush forces as an occupying army. Polls in the US show
Americans are starting to wake up from the sleep spell that Bush cast
on them. However, since Kerry has mostly supported the war, he is not
benefiting from the increased opposition to Bush.
The Bush forces have started to prosecute some of the soldiers in Iraq
for torturing prisoners. However, some of those involved in the
torture are "civilian" contractors and thus hard to punish for what
they do.
What's Wrong
with the European Union?
The Bush forces have changed the Iraqi flag, but Iraqis
reject it and use their old flag as a symbol of resistance.
Bush and his policies remind me increasingly of the former Soviet
Union. In Iraq we see what we used to call a "puppet government" when
the Soviet Union used them to rule other countries. The Soviet Union
also claimed to be giving these countries great benefits.
Korean organizations are defying a law requiring them to
verify the name of anyone who posts a comment about elections on the
internet.
Thugs in Colombia recently
killed relatives of a Coca Cola union leader.
Coca Cola company is being sued in the US for acts like this, and
there is a world-wide boycott (pass the word).
The reason these things go on in Colombia is that the US-supported
government there does not try to stop them.
A US court has become
legal battleground for abortion vocabulary.
Unlike some people, I'm not afraid to say "abortion". I'm not
"pro-choice", I'm in favor of the right to have an abortion.
Bush decided to recruit
Baathist generals and teachers, after the new Iraqi army refused
to fight against the resistance.
One said that the Bush forces are the terrorists. That description
seems to be accurate, because they seem to intend to cause so much
death and destruction in Falluja that Iraqis will be terrified to
resist the continued occupation of their country.
FIPR reports that
the ID card scheme will be an expensive failure for its stated
purposes such as preventing terrorism.
In Iraq, "we"
(meaning the Bush forces) are the barbarians.
I disagree partly with one point in this article: it criticizes
American Liberals for a point of view that I have not seen anyone
actually endorse. Speaking as a Liberal, I don't think the Liberals I
know would consider the mutilation of a few dead bodies more important
than the killing of thousands of civilians.
Canadian police appear to be using foreign
governments to arrest traveling Canadian citizens, and bypass
their human rights.
Flooding caused by global climate change could
cause $40 billion damage annually in the UK by the end of this
century (and proportionally more in the rest of the world). Even with
the greatest possible efforts to hold back global warming, the damage
will increase. Without great efforts, it will increase more.
Global warming is far more dangerous than terrorism. A hot spell
killed over ten thousand people in France last summer--more than all
the non-state-sponsored terrorism since 2000.
The UN launched an independent investigation into charges that the
Iraq oil-for-food program was corrupted by Saddam Hussein.
There are rumors that the investigation might be given up to buy
support from various countries for a UN legitimization of Bush control
in Iraq.
Many problems with vote counting are expected in the 2004 US
election, as Republicans walk out of the US Civil Rights Commission
which is trying to address them.
Sibel Edmonds was blocked from testifying about Bush administration
lies, but will have another hearing on June 14. Public support is
needed.
The Bush forces
threatened to enter Najaf, demanding that Al-Sadr
"fight with ideas not guns". How strange, because he was doing
exactly that until the Bush forces closed his newspaper. It looks
like they condemn all opposition whether it is peaceful or violent.
That's "democracy" for you, Bush style.
Meanwhile, the Bush forces in Baghdad started firing randomly after
they were attacked, and killed four Iraqi children. Bush continues to
insist that only supporters of Saddam Hussein, or foreigners, would
fight back after that kind of treatment.
Here is
the letter that 50 former British diplomats signed, criticizing
Blair's mideast policy.
Afghan women
burn themselves to death in despair because they are mistreated
by their husbands and in-laws.
Future Iraqi Security Forces Are Already Unraveling.
Two ways to terrorize the public: with real
attacks, or with false warnings.
Drug companies have
killed hundreds of thousands by manipulating medical research. One
method they use is to publish only the studies that give favorable
results, hiding other studies that don't. (Parapsychologists use the
same technique to fabricate evidence for psychic powers.)
Drug companies also influence studies by funding them. University
researchers are afraid to publish unfavorable results because they
might not get corporate funding for another study. But even those who
have the courage to publish the results whatever they may be still
face an obstacle: the drug companies sometimes put censorship power
into their contract with the university.
The European Parliament voted to go to court against the
EU's surrender to US demands for lots of personal information about
air travelers.
When Chris Patten says that Europeans would want their governments to
do "everything possible" to stop terrorism, "everything possible"
implicitly means complete abolition of restraints on police power and
the rights of the accused, and total surveillance. (To stop short of
that point is not doing "everything".) He wants Europeans to hand
over their rights quietly to the Bush regime, as it tries to do
"everything possible" to Europeans as well as Americans.
What the 9/11 commission hearings revealed about what
the Bush administration knew before 9/11. And contradictions it
did not investigate.
Over 50 former British diplomats have signed a letter to Tony Blair
criticising his Middle East policy.
Bush is telling more lies, this time about
the USA PAT RIOT act.
Shulamit Aloni: "Like
The Germans, We Don't Want To Know"
After reading this, I have to ask myself whether most
Americans likewise don't want to know what the Bush forces
are doing in Iraq.
Tampa police arrested Food not Bombs activists for sharing food with
homeless people.
The cruelty and injustice of a law against distributing food to the
homeless is evident. Many US cities try to make it impossible for
homeless people to live, because they are considered ugly and may
drive customers away from businesses. These businesses think the
place for homeless people is in the cemetary.
Food aid to Gaza has been resumed after Israel gave way to
international pressure. However, new Israeli demands threaten to halt
it again.
The US government focus on foreign terrorists may be
helping right-wing US terrorists regroup.
The right-wing ideology of the Bush regime might also be contributing
to it.
Diebold was aware early on that its voting machines had gross flaws.
The state of California is now considering decertifying them for the
coming election.
The Chinese government criticizes the US human rights record.
The US Commission on Ocean Policy proposes a trust fund filled from
oceanic oil and gas revenues, to protect the health of the oceans.
What is the terrible secret Vanunu could talk about?
250 French doctors have accused the right-wing governing party of
trying to destroy the national health system.
The Bush forces and the US government
use contract armies to evade legal restrictions. The result is
that other laws are thrown by the wayside.
Pro-government militias in Sudan killed over a
hundred men from a minority group. The UN is proving to be weak in
its criticism of this, and Human Rights Watch says the Sudanese
government has blocked UN investigation.
The US-supported leaders in Haiti, many of whom are gangsters and
murderers, are arresting and
murdering supporters of President Aristide.
Dubya's "ambassador" to Iraq is not a real
embassador, but he has lots of experience with terrorism.
The electric power, and the security cameras, were turned off
in the World Trade Center for much of September 9, 2001. This had
never happened before.
There were
protests at the Coca Cola annual shareholders meeting.
The attacks on the union in Colombia continue; a recent note
describes how relatives of a union leader were killed in their home
a few weeks ago.
Life in Iraq today, where the war isn't flaring up: occasional
violence, alongside shopping--while the Bushmen live in the gated
communities where Baath party leaders used to live, and try never to
go outside.
Bush officials lied to Congress
about the consequences of a change in air quality rules .
9/11: Gross
Negligence or Treason?
What triggered the Shia insurrection? It was the March 25
announcement of Bush plans to turn Iraq into a permanent colony.
The Bush forces, operating on Sharon's advice, are traveling the
same road that Sharon's invasion of Lebanon traveled, turning
the Shi'ite population into persistent enemies.
Right-wing Christian fanatics that support Bush demand a middle-east
policy of encouraging Israeli aggression, because
they hope this will bring about their prophecies of armageddon .
NORAD held drills based on the idea of airliners used to attack
buildings, in the
years and months before the 9/11 attacks.
Invading Iraq was a no-brainer after Bush's lobotomy.
Recent US "free trade" treaties have phony "protections" for labor
rights and the environment, but they
are too vague to do any good.
Other countries should cancel these treaties.
Kerry is now talking about
giving the UN real control over Iraq, which is borrowing some of
Kucinich's program. Maybe that will satisfy Iraqis that it isn't a
plan to turn their country into a colony. If so, maybe it will mean
peace there.
However, Kerry is still saying things like "We can't fail", which
really means "We can't ever admit a mistake, we can't ever cut our
losses". That attitude makes all mistakes bigger.
I agree with the people polled who say that Kerry says what he thinks
people want to hear. However, it is a mistake to think that Bush says
what he really believes. Bush says what he wants Americans to
believe--paying no attention to them. Kerry at least pays some
attention.
I think that a lot of Americans are hoping now that Kerry won't stick
to his position about keeping troops in Iraq "for as long as
necessary". I too hope he doesn't really mean it.
Bush Says
World Owes Israel's Sharon a 'Thank You'
The planned elimination of Israeli settlements from Gaza will be a
good thing, if Sharon ever really does it. But we can't thank Sharon
for this while ignoring the rest of what he orders the Israeli forces
to do to the Palestinians.
An Internet TV station in Belgium was shut down by the police, who
accused it of supporting terrorism. It is associated with an
opposition group in Turkey, whose government mistreats human rights
workers. (Many governments do that nowadays.)
The Israeli border police beat up a Palestinian child
then used him as a human shield. When witnesses
complained about this, they too were arrested and
used as human shields.
Sharon's Banana Republics
Is Bush really supporting his troops?
I regret the use of the term "our troops" in that article;
Americans, British, Italians, and citizens of the various
countries whose troops Bush has made use of should resist
the pressure to identify with Bush's war.
The propaganda used to justify the Bush invasion of Iraq
has been used many times before...to justify crushing
uprisings against various colonial regimes.
Washington is proposing a new agency to spy on Americans, when there
are already too many intelligence agencies stumbling over each other.
This is a distraction from the questions the US government really
ought to focus on.
A surgeon heads for Falluja, where he will support the resistance by
operating on the wounded (mostly civilians). He reports on the
civilians that the Bush forces have killed, and how they did it.
An imprisoned Palestinian leader proposes peace in Gaza in exchange
for effective Palestinian sovereignty within Gaza.
The Bush forces have declared main highways of Iraq off limits,
essentially cutting the country in pieces.
This is the classic way for an occupying army to lose a guerrilla war:
to stay in power, they must turn to increasingly oppressive security
measures. These sometimes achieve their short-term goals, but they
increase the occupied population's determination to win independence.
This article gives the history of the recent fighting in Iraq (through
April 16), and the history that led up to it--forgotten or never
learned by Americans, but remembered by Iraqis.
On the occasion of Mordechai Vanunu's non-release,
here is information on Israel's weapons of mass destruction.
The Bush administration backed down from a demand to prohibit US
publishers from editing scholarly articles published in Iran, Cuba,
etc.
However, as far as I can tell, the ban on subscribing to journals from
those countries remains in effect.
A human rights activist in Thailand, who is married to a member of a
minority group, is about to be deported--
because he complained to the public and the UN about how the minority
is treated in Thailand.
See also www.akha.org.
Mordechai Vanunu is about to be
"released" from one prison into another kind of prison.
He has been forbidden to speak about how he was abducted by Israeli
agents. What kind of excuse can there be for that?
A Colombian whose family members had been killed by right-wing gangs
sought asylum in the UK,
but the UK sent him home; they did not believe he was in danger. Two
months later, he has been shot (fortunately not fatally).
The Colombian government supports these gangs, and the US government
supports the Colombian government.
Why
Weinstein would be suspect as US National Archivist, and how his
appointment could be harmful.
Indian police have charged policemen and members of the Hindu
nationalist party in the massacre
of thousands of muslims in Gujarat two years ago.
Iraqi insurgents
are taking control of roads. The recent Bush forces road curfews
may be a response to that--but it won't work, for reasons previously
explained.
Some Iraqi insurgents are capturing
various foreigners who work in Iraq and holding them as
hostages. They killed one Italian "security guard" who was working
for a US company, and appears to have really been a mercenary
quasi-soldier, guarding convoys of supplies.
For insurgents to have shot him while he was on duty would have been
ordinary war. Killing him after capturing him is probably a war
crime. However, wrong as that is, we should not let it distract us
from the much larger war crimes being committed every day by the Bush
forces.
Bush seeks to replace the Archivist of the US with a partisan supporter
who will block the release of papers from the presidency of Bush I.
(The office of Archivist was supposed to be non-political.)
What did not occur in Iraq really
happened in Lebanon:
in 1982, the
Shi'ites of Lebanon welcomed invading Israeli forces as liberators.
But when liberation turned into occupation, they threw the occupiers
out. Bush, and everyone he asks for support, should pay attention.
The Bush administration allowed a Guantanamo interrogator to
talk about
an Australian prisoner, while trying to gag the prisoner's lawyer.
The statement might be the truth, or it might be a disinformation
campaign designed to influence a court hearing.
The Bush forces told noncombatants to flee from Falluja
to Baghdad, then attacked them in the desert on the way,
say witnesses.
Scientists have projected that the Greenland ice cap will begin to melt
before 2100, and this could flood many coastal cities.
The Bush forces in Falluja have orders to
shoot at anyone who moves
during the night, without trying to determine whether the person is a
combatant. That is a recipe for a massacre, so it's no surprise that
one is occurring.
Iraqis in Falluja are saying that the Bush forces make them
nostalgic
for Saddam's secret police.
Setting the Record Wrong on "News Hour".
US taxpayers:
1/4 of your taxes are going to pay for
crushing Iraq.
Kerry supports the war in Iraq, and his economic program is that of
Clinton--which means, make life harder for everyone but the rich.
It looks like Kerry will continue Dubya's policy of war crimes in
Iraq, and destroying social programs for the sake of the rich in the
US.
Whatever question you ask,
Bush has the same answer: "Iraq is a better
place now, and Saddam was bad."
General Kimmitt: if seeing children being killed by the Bush forces
bothers you, change the channel. Pay no attention to the killers
behind the curtain!
His statement has a kind of logic behind it, which this article
exposes and then refutes.
The Bush forces are heating up the fighting across Iraq. They say
that about 80 of their numbers have been killed in April.
Those official casualty figures are
less than half the true amount.
According to Robert Fisk, at least 80 mercenaries were killed in the
past week, but the Bush forces don't count them.
Jo Wilding reports on being inside an ambulance in Falluja
with the Bush forces shooting at her.
She was helping to pick up wounded, because the Bush forces won't
allow anyone Arab-looking to do it. People who try, just get shot in
turn. Would you like your country to be "liberated" like this?
Bush and Cheney saw a whole
stream of warnings about Al Qa'ida
in 2001.
After the massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, the ruling Hindu
Nationalist party (BJP)
interfered with the trials of some of the
killers. India's Supreme Court has ordered a retrial
in a different state.
Japanese revisionists are trying to
rewrite the history of WWII,
presenting Japan as the good guy, and treating the emperor once again
as a god. School textbooks are being rewritten, and teachers are
punished if they do not endorse the lies.
I wish the US had put itself in a position to criticize Japan
about this.
50+ U.S. CITIES HOLDING EMERGENCY
IRAQ PROTESTS & new cities are announcing their plans by the hour!
Many endangered species
are not protected by any of the existing wildlife reserves.
Even if they were protected, after global warming the reserves might
be in the wrong places for the job.
What the Bush forces did in Sadr City, Baghdad. (Shooting an
ambulance driver is just the beginning.)
This may be a partial answer to why no
fighters met the hijacked planes on 9/11: only 14 fighters were
kept on standby to do the job. And Rumsfeld was trying to reduce it
even more.
Keeping fighters on standby is expensive, but if you plan to launch an
expensive war, you need to save money somewhere.
Even some members of Bush's puppet Iraqi Governing Council have
condemned the Bush forces' violent attacks of recent days.
If Bush can't find anyone to "hand control of Iraq to" on June 30,
that will be good, because the "handover" would mean no benefit to
Iraqis, and would help validate whatever laws or give-aways he wants
to impose on Iraq.
A
Russian academic was convicted of spying, after he collected
information published in newspapers and books and sent it to a UK
company. His trial was rigged. The case is part of a pattern of cases
apparently intended to punish Russians for talking to foreigners in
ways that the Russian government does not like.
I wish the US were conducting itself in better fashion, but the Bush
plans for "military tribunals", and the practice of imprisonment without
trial, are worse.
Conditions in the Veteran's Administration hospitals are
outrageous.
One contributing factor is that the system is overloaded. With all
the casualties Bush has caused, the system needs a lot more staff, or
else they have to cut corners.
I was in Mass General Hospital last weekend; my arm was infected. A
nurse there told me that Mass General, unlike most hospitals, did not
overload their nursing staff. Still, there were times when nobody
responded to my request for assistance for an hour. I'm sure they
were busy with someone else who needed help more urgently, and the
consequence for me was nothing serious. However, if this happens in a
place with adequate staff like Mass General, I'm sure the staff in a
VA hospital must be struggling to cope, struggling to do the most
essential jobs. I would not blame them for trying to use the fastest
possible method when a patient needs to move his bowels. They did not
decide to hire too few nurses.
A friend who left nursing ten years ago told me she was required, as a
condition of employment, to take legal responsibility for the actions
of a number of nurse's aides who were doing things they were not
licensed to do without supervision. It was her job to supervise
them--but there were so many of them that she could not possibly
do the job properly.
She had another field to go into, so she quit. Other nurses, who
don't have any alternative except destitution, do sign, even though
they must feel bad about it. They're doing something wrong, but they
have been pressured into it and not everyone has the strength to
resist such pressure. I would put the blame on the management, not on
these nurses.
As a Bush forces commander was telling Al Jazeera that the Bush forces
had declared a unilateral cease fire in Falluja, Al Jazeera was
broadcasting live video of F-16s attacking residential areas of
Falluja, and women and children killed by their missiles. The
commander later said Al Jazeera's coverage was a "series of lies".
No wonder the Bush forces forced Al Jazeera out of Falluja. Honest
journalism might show the truth.
I suppose the people refer to Al Jazeera as "the CNN of the
Arab world" are unaware of what CNN is like. They probably just
mean it is much more popular than anything else.
The Bush forces have been faking their public
support in Iraq ever since the beginning, while using a series of
ever-changing lies to keep denying the truth. The lies continue now,
but more people see through them.
Just a couple of
victims of America's War on Drugs.
When a war is on drugs, it forgets who the enemy was supposed to be
and starts hurting whoever it can get its hands on.
Remote
Control Warriors
I wish that our army could fight without putting its
soldiers in danger. I also wish I could identify which army
is "ours".
The Bush forces have
killed over 450 Iraqis in Falluja and wounded over 1000 in a week
of fighting, reports the head of the city's main hospital.
The Al Jazeera news team is the only one in Falluja. The Bush forces
are demanding that it leave, as a condition of estblishing a temporary
cease-fire. We know that they have been studying Israeli tactics, and
Israel has used various policies to prevent outside witnesses to what
their forces do in Gaza. I think Bush wants to make sure there are no
witnesses to report on the next thousand casualties, or the thousand
after that.
Defying
Stereotypes About Death Row
This illustrates how it is easy to convict a person of some crime or
other if the majority of the community starts out prejudiced against
him. That lowers the threshold of evidence necessary for a
conviction to the point where it's not hard to fabricate.
I think it is instructive to compare this with the recent case where
several American Muslims were sentenced to 50 years in prison under guilt by association.
Coleen Rowley is an FBI agent who in May 2002 wrote to the director
accusing the FBI top brass of
hampering the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui. This letter
was published.
In a recent interview she reveals that the FBI is gagging her
from telling the public any more about what the FBI did wrong.
Putin won the
Russian election by controlling the media, but the vote counting
was fishy too.
NJ policemen have been sentenced to prison for beating a handcuffed
man to death.
It's common for police to savage those who have been detained, and not
too rare for this to be fatal. It feels good to see them, for once,
punished under the same laws that they claim to enforce.
The Iraqi intelligence source who reported mobile bioweapons labs was
already
known as a habitual liar.
It has been documented that Bush and Blair agreed to attack Iraq just
days after the 9/11 attacks, and that they used various more or less
dishonest means to come up with excuses for it. Treating false or
unreliable information as valid is a pattern commonly repeated.
Ocean "dead zones" caused by excess fertilizer runoff
are growing.
High demand for beef speeds destruction
of Amazon forest.
Around 1/4 million seabirds were
killed by the oil spilled from the tanker Prestige, which sank
near Spain.
The Bush administration refuses to show the
9/11 investigation the speech that Rice was supposed to give on
9/11, but nonetheless claims it is cooperating with the
investigation.
Saying and doing opposite things is common for politicians; only a
few, the truly honest ones, don't do it. But Bush seems to do this
everywhere, every time.
Neither
Fallujah nor the Iraqi Shi'ites supported Saddam before the war.
The Bush forces created the armed opposition that they face now. In
each case they started with violence against nonviolent opposition.
After the opposition took up violence too, the Bush forces escalated
it.
(The "contractors" working for Blackwater Security would be more
accurately described as mercenary soldiers in the Bush forces.)
Al-Sadr claims that the Iraqi Ministry of Justice says it has no
evidence to suspect him of involvement in the murder of another
Shi'ite cleric in Apil 2003. Perhaps this is why the Bush forces were
unable to cite any such evidence when asked by the press.
Bush has taught the Iraqis something about freedom and democracy, and
justice as well. They now ridicule the idea that he supports those
ideals. If only Americans would learn this.
Sibel Edmonds says that before 9/11
she saw specific warnings that terrorists might use airplanes
to attack skyscrapers in the US.
The Bush administration wants Americans to say "Support our troops"
but its own idea of supporting the troops is more like
cheating them and endangering them. Here's a compendium of different
ways.
I don't agree 100% with all of the points made there. I disagree that
the US should have a larger army--if it avoids unjust war, the current
army is quite adequate.
I think that it is right to explain to reservists that they may
someday be called up--people joining the reserves should understand
that the reserves exist because they may be needed in war. What was
wrong was to get people to join by encouraging them to imagine they'd
never have to fight.
Today in America - Conservative
Fascism and Environmental Decline . Key American Ideals Are in
Conflict with the Earth and Other Nations.
Walter Cronkite describes several instances where Bush
has used secrecy to support lies. And sometimes used lies to
support the secrecy.
Copyright will prevent thousands of Canadian boaters from
updating their computerized navigational charts this year. The
result could be dangerous.
The Canadian government should not allow any monopolies or limitations
on the use of navigational charts, or other maps. Everyone should be
free to redistribute them, and to publish changed versions too, as
long as they label them as changed. The GNU GPL would be a
good license to use.
China announced a
bizarrely twisted interpretation of Hong Kong's basic law,
intended to prevent direct elections in Hong Kong.
Another article, for which I can't find a good URL, said that Hong
Kong's democracy campaigners are not giving up. They may try to
pressure Hong Kong's nondemocratic government into adopting democracy
even though Beijing does not like it.
How the closure of
Al-Sadr's newspaper led to widespread fighting in Iraq. The fighting was
not inevitable, at least not now. But the Bush forces repeatedly
acted to make things worse: first closing the paper, then arresting
Al-Sadr's aide, then saying they would arrest Al-Sadr himself.
The Bush forces are
meeting heavier fighting in Fallujah now than anything they
encountered a year ago. Officers are comparing this with Vietnam.
The fighting in most Iraqi cities has shut down normal life around the
country.
People are afraid to go out on the street, afraid in particular to
get near a Bush forces convoy.
A few Iraqis talk about how the blind killing of their relatives, and
the arrest of others, and a year of humiliation and fear, have brought
them to the point where all they want is to
kick the Bush forces (they say "America") out of their country.
I don't know if they will ever see a distinction between America
itself and the perversion of America that is George Bush.
Here's an article that argues that the Bush forces cannot transfer
control of Iraq to a provisional government, because they don't
have control of Iraq.
The article proceeds to say that the Bush forces should make sure
someone or something is in control in Iraq before leaving. Some
Democratic presidential candidates took similar positions. However,
the article doesn't suggest how to do this, and neither did most of
those presidential candidates.
I doubt that the Bush forces have the ability to put anyone "in
control" in Iraq. Whoever they try to put in charge will be seen as
an illegitimate foreign puppet. As they did in Vietnam, maybe large
military forces could keep the puppet in power officially, at the cost
of permanent war, but pull them out and he will fall.
Kucinich suggested the UN might be able to take control, if the US
allowed the UN to make clear that it would not let Bush steal Iraqi
oil or impose privatization schemes, etc. I am not sure that any
international organization commands enough trust among Iraqis to be
able to do this now.
If the common hatred for Bush can unite Shi'ites and Sunnis, maybe
they can establish some sort of government together without the need
for a bloodbath. I am not sure whether it will be better than
Saddam's regime, but it would be better than the present permanent war
of occupation. There would still be the problem of how they would
deal with the Kurds, who mostly want to be independant. Perhaps if
they peacefully recognize indepedence for the Kurds, at least in a
quiet de-facto way, a civil war can be avoided.
Nonviolent protestors (Palestinian, Israeli, and foreigners together)
blocked construction of the land-grab wall through the Palestinian
village of Biddu. But they paid a high price, since the Israeli
soldiers tried violence before they gave up and went away.
Nonviolent resistance is growing in Palestine, and it is even becoming
a point of solidarity for some Israelis with Palestinians. It is like
a dream starting to come true. But this dream could still be forcibly
crushed. Sharon wants Palestinians to commit terrorist acts which
could be an excuse for even more deadly Israeli terrorist acts. If
nonviolent resistance starts to succeed, Palestinians might head in
that direction instead and away from terror. Then what excuse will
Sharon use?
I expect Sharon will respond to nonviolent resistance with constantly
increasing violence.
A doctor testified in support of the the law prohibiting the "dilation
and extraction" abortion technique, claiming that a 20-week fetus can
feel pain, and that it is conscious.
He surely is exaggerating about the latter. A fetus at that stage of
development cannot be conscious the way a dog or a cow is conscious,
since its brain cells are mostly not wired up to each other. (That
happens arond the 7th month, I think I recall.) It can't even have
the consciousness of a lobster. The most it can be capable of is
reflexes, and that does not confer rights. A fetus after 20 weeks of
development qualifies as a kind of animal, but it is not a person.
We generally condemn causing animals unnecessary suffering, but most
people do not condemn killing animals. Even most vegetarians will
support the killing of animals for stronger reasons, such as when a
particular animal is causing great trouble for people.
If fetuses can feel some kind of pain, perhaps we should anesthetize
the fetus during an abortion, so it doesn't feel any pain. But that
doesn't translate into an obligation to keep it alive until it turns
into a person. It doesn't merit the right to life until it is a
person.
Unlike most supporters of abortion rights, I do not oppose the recent
law that makes it a crime to injure a fetus (abortion excluded). If
you do something to a fetus so that *when* it becomes a person it is
seriously injured or impaired, at that point a person has indeed been
harmed.
I doubt there is any need for a law against this as regards
individuals, since I doubt many people intentionally injure fetuses.
When they do, it is probably a crime for some other reasons already.
Corporations, however, have sometimes willfully followed practices
that they knew would subject fetuses to the danger of being deformed
or impaired after they become persons--through toxic products, and
toxic environmental pollution. And the biggest culprit is the US
Army, with its uranium munitions. The uranium can cause birth
defects.
If such a law is to be effective, it has to be aimed primarily at
corporations and government agencies, rather than at individuals.
Many stores are cheating workers by falsifying their working hours.
It is illegal to do this, and some workers are beginning to sue.
However, with both management and workers terrified of losing their
jobs, often nobody says "Stop!" What we see here is that the shortage
of living-wage jobs in the US creates a situation where it is easy for
businesses to cut everyone's pay. It is hard to hold back so much
pressure.
It would be useful for some state officials to start investigating
this and prosecuting the lying managers. They could send in
undercover agents to take jobs and carefully record their hours, and
check whether the store reduces them. That might scare the crooked
managers enough that they stop.
Meanwhile, I think that the size of the chains that these stores are
part of plays a role too. The chain can put pressure on managers to
cheat or else be replaced, without officially ordering them to cheat;
and thus they can deny responsibility for the consequences of their
actions.
A publication by the human rights group Liberty demolishes the case
for national ID cards in the UK.
Condoleezza Rice's testimony in the 9/11 investigation is part of a
deal that enables her to get away with lies, because the investigation
will be unable to summon further testimony from anyone else who worked
with or for her.
Iraq is falling into chaos as the insurrection spreads to most major
cities.
The Bush forces are treating nearly all Iraqis as enemies now, and
learning from the Israeli Army how to do it. Can anyone still believe
the fiction that they are trying to "liberate" these selfsame Iraqis?
Rumsfeld said recently that this is a "contest of wills". The contest
is now between the Bush administration and the people of Iraq.
The Bush forces say they want to arrest Al-Sadr for a murder committed
months ago, but refuse to disclose any evidence connecting him to the
crime. We have to suspect that there isn't any evidence, and that
this accusation was fabricated as a response to the protests he
launched about the closure of his movement's newspaper. This
backfired, and Bush got what he deserved.
I don't think that the many (Americans, Iraqis, and others) who were
killed or wounded in the process deserved what they got. This
fighting is pointless and unnecessary. We have to ask, is it virtuous
to be stubborn and never admit a mistake? Is there any reason for
this contest of wills against Iraqis who want independence for their
country?
The right thing to do in Iraq is to let the Iraqis win soon. They will
win in the end, but the longer it takes, the more people will suffer
or die along the way.
Blair is citing a thwarted bomb plot in the UK, as well as the actual
bombings in Spain, as
a new excuse for imposing compulsory ID cards.
These are completely irrational grounds. The UK government's success
in thwarting this plot shows there is little need for compulsory ID cards.
The success of the bombs in Spain, which already has
compulsory ID cards (a hold-over from Franco's tyranny, I'd guess),
shows they are not necessarily effective.
This article
explains how terrorists will be able to get official ID cards
using false identification. These ID cards won't be labeled "terrorist".
Whether or not they are useful for preventing terrorism, ID cards may
be useful for Blair's unadmitted goal, which is
to crush dissent. The UK's "anti-terrorism" laws have been
repeatedly applied to
nonviolent protestors, and ID cards will surely be no exception.
Former professor Al-Arian is to be
tried for financing terrorism. The US government has refused to
give the court the recordings of his phone taps.
They say this is because "he already knows what's in them", which is
completely absurd. The point is not what he knows, but what he can
demonstrate in court. If this is evidence that would clear him, he
has the right to get it and present it; to deny him evidence that is
available to the government prosecuting him would make the trial
manifestly unfair.
Republicans in Bush's Office of Strategic Communications in Iraq are
sending out press releases about the "progress" of the war designed to
help re-elect Bush.
Only some of the soldiers in the Bush forces in Iraq come from armies
of various countries. Many are
"civilian" mercenaries. The four "civilians" recently killed in
Fallujah were mercenaries, not real civilians at all. This is a tactic
designed to underestimate the casualty figures.
The stupid war in Iraq is putting such strain on the Bush forces that
they are
sending injured soldiers back into combat against medical orders.
Often the result is to exacerbate the injury that didn't have time to
heal.
Ten years of mergers have made the US oil industry highly concentrated
at all levels. The result is a lack of real competition. Public
Citizen points out how the Bush energy bill would do nothing to help,
and would
actually make this worse.
I support all of Public Citizen's recommendations, but I think they
don't go far enough. Today's 5 big oil companies should be split up
into at least 15 companies. It is dangerous to let companies become
too big, in any field, because that gives them power no company should
have.
Meanwhile, we had better increase the gasoline tax so that people
start to conserve, as they do in Europe.
The Republican Party is trying to shut down various Democratic
political activist groups before the election.
When Jeb Bush blocked tens of thousands of eligible black voters from
voting in Florida, thus stealing the election for Dubya, it took two
years to reach a settlement that Florida wouldn't do this any more.
That was long enough for Jeb Bush to get himself reelected before
giving them back their voting rights. Dubya apparently believes that
he deserves fast service while Democrats do not.
9 days after September 11, Bush got Blair to promise to support an
attack on Iraq. When Blair subsequently claimed that he had made
no final decision, he was lying.
Some soldiers returning from the Bush forces are suffering
from poisoning from the uranium used in munitions --and in tank
armor in US tanks, too.
While it may be a good idea to test more soldiers for this problem,
that is not much of a solution, since there is no treatment for
uranium poisoing. The only constructive action we can take is to stop
using uranium in supposedly non-nuclear weapons.
Iraqi insurgents mounted
several large attacks on the Bush forces, causing substantial
casualties.
The quotes from the Bush forces claim signs of success which really
don't mean anything. Killing some of the insurgent fighters means
nothing, and even capturing their leaders means little, since they can
always recruit more. The strength of a guerrilla campaign is limited
either by available arms or by public support. Arms being plentiful
in Iraq, public support is the limiting factor. The Bush forces may
"retake" Fallujah in some sense, but what they do to achieve this
will increase public support for the insurgents. I saw some news
about helicopters shooting at a mosque and killing people. That's not
likely to win any hearts and minds.
One other point: the arrest warrant against Al-Sadr is based on the
killing of a rival cleric by a mob. I wonder what evidence there
is to connect the killing with Al-Sadr in particular. While I would
surely be strongly against his religious views, I still have to wonder
if he is being framed. I wish the US had the sort of leadership I
could count on not to do such a thing.
I've also read claims that the arrest warrant for Al-Sadr was in
response to predominantly peaceful protests about the closure of a
newspaper (previously reported below).
It sounds like the current increased violence was
instigated by the Bush forces.
Bush may try to delay the 9/11 commission report until after the
election.
The Taliban were seriously
considering turning over Osama bin Laden to the US in early 2001.
I hoped for liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban for other reasons
(which is why I supported the US invasion there). Unfortunately things
are not going very well, partly because the aid that would have been needed
to get Afghanistan on its feet has been spent instead on war in Iraq.
A 15-year-old female, was accused of "child abuse" as well as "child
pornography", for taking nude photos of herself and posting them
on the Internet. They are taking the prudish term "self abuse"
seriously to the point of cruelty.
I have not seen these photos, but 15 years is several years past the
average age of puberty in the US. Calling her a "child" is an
exaggeration almost as dishonest as accusing her of "abusing" herself.
The prohibition of "child pornography" is based on the premise that a
child has been abused in producing it. In some cases, that may be
true. But this case proves it is sometimes false. I wish I knew how
to contact her, so I could tell her, "Don't ever admit that there was
any wrong in what you did!"
Rice was preparing a speech for Sep 11 on national security, which
focused on missile defense and
paid no attention to terrorism as a threat.
To speak about missile defense is not itself a bad thing, since
missile defense might be a good idea if it worked and were affordable.
(The actual plans for missile defense plans are an absurd waste and
would not work.) But this reinforces other evidence that the Bush
administration was ignoring Al Qa'ida until Sep 11.
After Sep 11, Al Qa'ida became the favorite excuse to attack "enemies"
such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and civil liberties and justice in the
US, which had no real connection with Al Qa'ida.
A New Zealand advocate of the right to
die has been convicted of murder because she granted the request
of her terminally ill mother for a quick death.
There is no justice in forcing suffering people to live to the bitter end.
The purpose of jury trials is so that juries can prevent governments
from imprisoning people for reasons that their peers consider unjust.
The jurors should have disregarded the judge and voted "not guilty".
Camilo Mejia, a soldier in the Bush forces, ran
away rather than return to Iraq. His experiences convinced him
that he was fighting on the side of injustice.
His commander accused Mejia of cowardice. I am sure it was frightening
to be in Iraq; but is obeying orders and not thinking true courage?
The corporations that are helping to shift Americans' eating habits in
the direction of obesity are pushing a bill to exempt
themselves from liability for the results.
Individuals have part of the responsibility for what they eat, but
other actors in society share the responsibility. Individuals pay
most of the price of their own obesity, and will continue to do so.
It makes sense to ensure that the other actors that share the
responsibility also pay part of the price; then they may change
their actions.
A high school student in Arizona was arrested for wearing his
cap turned sideways.
The authorities said this was a "symbol of defiance". There's some
doubt about whether that's true, so let's imagine he had worn a
completely explicit and indisputable symbol, like the anarchist shirt
that Katie Sierra
wore. Would that justify arresting someone, in the land of the free
and the home of the brave?
If the people who run the school district think this conduct is even
remotely close to legitimate, they deserve to be fired. They are
running their school system to teach Americans to obey tyrants.
Not just real defiance, but even its symbols, are forbidden.
Three cheers for the students who protested this arrest!
Note also how the "crime" of failing to obey an arbitrary demand was
disguised under other names. This is standard practice for stretching
laws into injustice.
Iraqi resistance forces in Fallujah killed
nine of the Bush forces, then burned and hung some of the corpses,
as crowds cheered. (This article mentions four contractors, but five
official soldiers were killed in a separate attack. The Bush forces use lots
of contractors alongside official soldiers, as an excuse to understate
casualty figures.)
Those who describe this attack as an "atrocity" and "barbaric" are
exaggerating. There have been real atrocities in Iraq--for instance,
killing unarmed religious pilgrims, and dropping tons of depleted
uranium dirty bombs. The car bomb recently set off in a market is the
kind of act that qualifies as an atrocity, though perhaps it was not
big enough to deserve the term. But this attack, which was directed
at members of the occupying forces and hit no one else, was simply
war. We should not weaken the word "atrocity" by applying it to
attacks against occupying armies.
Perhaps those who use these words are expressing horror at the
mutilation of the corpses. Since they claim to be devout Christians,
they should remember that according to their own religion a corpse is
just an empty husk. Damaging a corpse is not hurting the person who
died, who is beyond all harm; it merely expresses anger. The cheering
crowds showed that the anger was general, not limited to the few who
were actually holding the corpses.
How should we respond to this anger? We could, like the Bush
administration, use it as an excuse to attack all the Iraqis in
Fallujah. (This could mean committing a real atrocity.) But it would
be more intelligent to reflect on what the Bush forces have done to
arouse this anger, and whether it is justified.
The US Senate is considering a bill to censor
university education in departments that teach foreign languages.
The House already passed it.
The International Federation of Journalists criticized Belgium Bfor laws that
inadequately protect the freedom of the press, and said this made
Brussels a bad place to locate EU institutions.
This problem was illustrated by the arrest of investigative
journalist Hans-Martin Tillack
The US vetoed a UN resolution condemning the Israeli murder
of Sheikh Yassin and bystanders. The resolution condemned
"all attacks against civillians". The only state that opposed
it was the US.
Why does the US support attacks on civilians? The article explains
that the US also engages in such assassinations. The US may at
present to be limiting this policy to armed adversaries that it cannot
arrest, much as Israel did until recent years, but they do kill
bystanders.
As explained in that article, we cannot expect Democrats
to criticize assassination any more than Bush does.
There is more opposition to this assassination policy within
Israel than in the US.
The president of Uzbekistan, with US support, has
banned opposition parties.
This illustrates how Bush supports democracy around the world.
Israeli forces attacked and arrested Israeli peace activists who
were nonviolently blocking the demolition of Arab homes.
They also attacked and arrested settlers who were blocking the
demolition of a new settlement attempt.
If looked at superficially, those two attacks seem symmetrical, but
the situation is not really balanced. The settlers are taking the
Palestinians' land, and are only rarely impeded in doing so. The
Palestinians are using their own land, and are subject to a barrage of
demolitions.
The UNWRA, which provides food to much of the population of Gaza,
says that Israeli checkpoint restrictions have forced it to stop.
It can no longer bring enough food in. The problem has continued
so long that its warehouses in Gaza have run empty.
If Israel does not relent, this could mean mass starvation.
Bayer gave up on trying to grow genetically modified corn in the UK.
Bayer said the conditions made it uneconomical.
One of the tough conditions that Bayer surely did not like was that if
Bayer's modified genes polluted the crops of other farmers, Bayer
would be liable for the damages. This illustrates that much of global
business only appears to be "economically viable" because the
corporations dump part of the costs on other people.
A fairly hawkish Israeli commentator says that the murder of
Sheikh Yassin shows that Sharon has no strategy for peace.
As Bush continually asks for more government power "to fight terrorism",
he doesn't fund the full use of the government's existing powers
for this purpose.
This is more evidence that terrorism is just an excuse for an
agenda based on ulterior motives.
A researcher who published information on flaws he discovered in an
anti-virus program is being
prosecuted in France for "counterfeiting".
Dennis Kucinich says he regards uranium munitions as illegal
under the existing treaties about war, and would order the
cessation of their use.
Many US businesses impose drug tests on their employees.
The employees respond by trying to fool the tests.
There might be a legitimate reason to test whether employees
are incapacitated (due to drugs or other reasons) while on the job,
but these tests detect drug use while off the job, and that is none
of the employer's business. I think it is justified for employees
to lie about such things.
This article analyzes the evidence about the September 11 attack on
the Pentagon, in an attempt to determine what actually happened. It
ends up with a peculiar conclusion, which in my view suggests that the
evidence is simply hard to reconcile.
I still think it is unlikely that the US government organized the
September 11 attacks (though Bush seems to have played a big role in
failing to stop them). However, the fact that much of the important
evidence has been withheld from the public is suspicious.
If the official investigations are to command respect, they need to
investigate the evidence--all of it, including the Pentagon security
tapes and the recorders of the airplanes--and establish for us, not
just assume, that the buildings were hit by jetliners, that the
jetliners were being flown by hijackers, and who the hijackers were.
Bremer closes hardline newspaper and Iraqis ask: Is this democracy US-style?
Sharks around the world are in danger from fishers who cut off their
fins for shark fin soup, and let the rest of the shark rot.
A friend who studies sharks in Tahiti says that the sharks she has
studied for years have recently all been killed for their fins.
(These sharks do not hurt people--they are too small for that.) If
all the mature females are killed, the species cannot reproduce. It
may soon be wiped out in the Tahiti area. And perhaps everywhere else
too, since the finning is going on world-wide.
The Afghan government
postponed first elections, to gain time
to disarm warlords and register voters.
This may be necessary; I am sure they wouldn't accept the humiliation
of this delay if they did not have to. But will it be sufficient?
Uri Avnery explains how Hamas, including the recently murdered
Sheikh Yassin, has been willing to accept peace in the past -- and how his
killing is helping to unite Palestinian combat organizations even as it
helps convert pragmatic supporters of Hamas into hard-core religious fanatics.
Comparisons with events in Israel's own liberation struggle add to the
interest of the article.
Assassination was formerly an Israeli tactic applied, very rarely,
against fighters living in hostile foreign countries--in effect, a
tactic of war.
Assassinating people in territories where the Israeli army
moves at will is a different matter. And that's not
even to mention the regular killing of bystanders.
Condoleezza Rice is
contradicting herself and other administration
officials, as the tissue of lies falls apart.
The US has started making threats against Jamaica over its
plans to host Haitian President Aristide.
The Caribbean nations have
refused to recognize the Haitian government
that the US installed.
How global corporations move their profits and losses around
artificially, so as to avoid taxes and bilk the public. And how the
US government encouraged dictators to stash their funds in dollars.
Prohibiting related businesses from operating in multiple countries
might help with the problem of phony transfer pricing. If country X
says that its businesses must deal with those of other countries
through short-term contracts only, and makes sure they get negotiated
in a competitive situation, that trick could not be played. (That
solution might be appropriate for some fields and not others.)
A little known international organization is being allowed to impose
biometric passports in many countries.
More information
In Europe, the recent medium-sized terrorist attack in Madrid is
already being cited as an excuse to attack civil liberties, including
increased surveillance of travel.
A
US investigation found Bush acted inadequately against Al
Qa'ida. While it's true that we can't demand of any government that it
block all terrorist attacks, the Bush administration had enough information
to block the 9/11 attacks--if only it had tried.
This article lays out why the 9/11 attacks should have been stopped.
Several members of the Bush administration have been telling
demonstrable lies about the 9/11 attacks and about the decision to
invade Iraq.
Amnesty International summarizes how the US is violating both treaties
and the international standards of human rights, imprisoning people
in Guantanamo with no trials or with sham trials.
Three scandals at once about the Bush Medicare law.
The Bush regime used the PAT RIOT act to
seize a lawyer's email from
AOL, and turn off his account as well. This included privileged
communications with his clients. This punishment was imposed without
a trial--if he wants to challenge it, he has to sue the government,
which is impractical for a mere individual even when he is a lawyer.
Punishment without trial has been a feature of US law for 20 years.
Using the procedure called "civil forfeiture", state or federal
governments can seize your assets (including your car, your house, or
your money) on suspicion it was used in connection with buying drugs.
Then you have to sue to get it back, and if you ever do, it may be
trashed completely.
Springmann could have prevented part of this disaster by not keeping
any important information in his ISP's machine. Don't use the
services that offer to keep your mail and your address book! Keep
them on your own computer. The police can't seize your own computer
without at least informing you, and you may get a chance to argue
about it. If you keep backups, they won't be able to present much of
an argument for seizing those. Meanwhile, use encrypted mail for
anything sensitive.
Springmann's failure to do these things was a mistake in that it made
him more vulnterable, but such mistakes do not excuse wrongdoing. If
you walk into a dangerous part of town, that may be a mistake, but it
doesn't excuse someone else for robbing or raping you there. The
issue is the same here.
Three Americans have been sentenced to 50 years in prison
for
association with an organization that was subsequently
declared terrorist.
These men had neither committed nor planned any act that would
normally be called a crime. In the tyranny of today's US, playing
paintball with the wrong people is considered a crime.
The article raises the possibility that these people's religion was
part of the motive for this abortion of justice. I think that doesn't
change anything. Guilt by association is so unjust that nothing can
make it worse.
The 9/11 investigation commission got testimony from Rumsfeld, but
omitted to ask him several crucial questions about the lack of the
standard military response to the hijackings.
An investigation cannot be adequate unless it gets to the bottom of
why fighter planes were not immediately dispatched, as usual, to the
hijacked jets. If there was some sort of hijacking training
exercise on 9/11, the investigation needs to figure out how it
happened that the real hijackings occurred on the same day.
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds says she was told, after 9/11,
to change her translations of some intercepted messages in order to
support Bush priorities. Then she was both bribed and threatened
not to tell the public about these orders.
The European Union
had a prominent journalist arrested.
He was investigating corruption; perhaps he made some corrupt
officials feel uncomfortable.
As the president of South Africa was celebrating Human Rights Day and
inaugurating the Constitutional Court, the police were
attacking and arresting peaceful protestors trying to march there.
Just ten years ago, South Africa held its first democratic elections.
How quickly those who fight for liberty can become the oppressors.
The BBC is
cracking down harshly on people who were involved in
broadcasting the slightly flawed report based on Dr Kelly's
information. Their colleagues are standing up for them.
Mordecai Vanunu is still wondering whether he will
be subject to some form of prison-after-prison when
his sentence for whistle-blowing ends.
"Administrative detention" is what Bush has done with
two supposed terrorist suspects. It's another word for
"nobody has any rights".
How is the Gaza Strip different from a prison?
New Israeli restrictions keep most foreigners out of Gaza, so that
they can't observe the atrocities committed there, or participate in
non-violent resistance.
Exxon has
delayed for 15 years the payment of compensation for the
Exxon Valdez oil spill. This is ruining people's lives.
The atmospheric carbon dioxide level increased even more in 2003
than in recent years.
Israelis have joined their Palestinian neighbors in petitioning to
reroute the separation wall to prevent the wall from cutting those neighbors off from their
land.
Scientists have projected the
extinction of up to 50% of all species of
life in the coming century, but this is a rough estimate. Perhaps
only 40% of species will be wiped out. This isn't reliable enough
to satisfy Bush, who has relaxed the requirements for protecting endangered
species in some US forests.
Protecting a species in small areas may work while the climate is
stable and that can keep living where they live now. But we know
the climate is going to change.
It is ironic that Israel is now assassinating HAMAS leaders (along
with whoever is in the area at the time), because Israel secretly
supported HAMAS in the 80s to weaken the position of Arafat. (The
history parallels that of the US with Osama bin Laden, and also with
Saddam Hussein.)
In recent years, HAMAS has given Israel an excuse to destroy the
Palestinian police force--on the grounds that it could not control
HAMAS terrorism. Now Israel can
forever demand that Arafat stop
terrorism, confident he is in no position even to try.
I have to ask: when civilians are killed by a bomb, does the fact that
it was dropped by a pilot in total safety, rather than carried by a
person expecting to die, mean this is not terrorism?
Israel's defense is that these killings are "targeted". Not all the
victims are random, since one person has been singled out for attack.
But does the fact that one of the victims was specifically intended
mean that the inevitable killing of unknown others is not terrorism?
For instance, if a suicide bomber were to detonate a bomb at a street
corner where a specific government employee is thought to be passing
by, would this mean that the deaths of others who were passing by at
the time was not terrorism?
Civilized countries are supposed to arrest those who are accused of
wrongdoing, or at least offer them the chance to surrender. Shooting
without warning, even if it were done with weapons that usually did
not kill bystanders, is barbarism. But its sneaky purpose is to make
sure the cycle of revenge continues.
The Bush forces
imprisoned Al Jazeera reporters for 6 weeks,
torturing them, based on false accusations while refusing to
check the facts. This is part of a systematic campaign to suppress
independent Arabic reporting from Iraq.
The campaign also includes European journalists.
Robert Fisk reports on the visit he received.
I like the way he has identified the practice of insulting people, and
tacking on "Sir" as an excuse to claim to have been polite. The
resulting message is an insult disguised transparently as respectful
treatment.
We also see, in these reports, examples of the standard practice of
excusing outrageous acts with outrageous lies. This pattern is widely
repeated. During the capture of Baghdad, when a Bush forces tank
killed Al Jazeera staff in the hotel that all the foreign journalists
used, they said "We were being fired at from that room". This was provably false.
To tell a blatant lie, one that everyone knows is a lie, conveys the
message: "We won't hesitate to lie any time. The truth won't protect
you, because we spit on the truth."
Which is more serious--broadcasting "indecent" material,
or killing an employee?
It is interesting to view the Israeli assassination
of Sheikh Yassin in the light of this article by Lev Grinburg of Ben Gurion University.
Increasing carbon dioxide in the air is
changing the ecology of the
Amazon rainforest, helping some species and hurting others.
This is an additional threat to the survival of whatever species make it
past habitat destruction and global warming. It may also contribute
to global warming, because it favors trees that absorb less carbon
dioxide.
The Vancouver police department defended its violent attacks on
activists--thus placing the moral onus for the act directly on the
department's leadership.
The "interim" Iraqi constitution is designed so that the
Bush-appointed governing council can make decisions that elected
Iraqis will be unable to undo.
This must be how Bush plans to steal the oil and force the doors
open for Halliburton and Bechtel to privatize the government.
The assassination of the leader of HAMAS
illustrates how Sharon ensures the continuation
of sufficient terrorism to serve as an excuse
for his policies.
Israeli soldiers shot at nonviolent protestors,
both Israeli and Palestinian, who were jointly opposing the construction of the
land-grab wall.
They used rubber bullets, but used them in a way forbidden by Army
regulations because it is too likely to kill or seriously injure
people. And--isn't this amazing--they were building the wall in
violation of a court order to stop.
It's not news that the Israeli forces act like an occupying army.
What's noteworthy is that they act that way towards Israelis and their
civil institutions, as well as towards Palestinians and theirs.
Bush
proposes a constitutional amendment to "protect democracy".
Richard Clarke, who was Bush's chief counterterrorism
advisor, says he was pressured to blame the 9/11 attacks
on Iraq.
He also says that Bush paid very little attention to terrorism
as a threat prior to 9/11.
Rep. Waxman has made a report analyzing the pattern of
statements made about Iraq by Bush and his main lieutenants.
A million protestors opposed the occupation of Iraq.
In Kosovo, Albanian gangs are rampaging against the few remaining
Serbs, driving them out. Although the official leaders of the
Albanians say they disapprove, they can't or won't stop this.
I'm not surprised by this; in fact, I was surprised to learn that so
many Serbs were still in Kosovo. I supported the NATO intervention in
Kosovo, but I did not think it had any chance of leading to ethnic tolerance.
NATO prevented Serbia from permanently oppressing, or
driving out, or killing, large numbers of Albanians; shortly
thereafter, the KLA (which was effectively a gang) drove most of the
Serb minority out of Kosovo. The expulsion of the remaining Serbs is
evil, but at least it's a smaller evil.
Kerry supported Bush in asking the newly elected leader of Spain to
continue supporting the Bush forces in Iraq. Fortunately he seems to
be courageous enough to stand up to both of them.
Kerry is only a little better than Bush. Kerry voted for the USA PAT
RIOT Act. Kerry voted to invade Iraq. Kerry supports the
Reagan/Clinton policies of globalizing the power of corporations. I'm
not sure if I will vote for him, but I can't possibly endorse him.
Haitian President Aristide is now visiting Jamaica at the request of a
group of caribean nations. The US ambassador said
that allowing Aristide to come so near Haiti is "promoting violence".
The Jamaican government took that as a threat.
Standing up to a bully may increase the probability that he will be violent.
In that sense only, this visit may be "promoting violence".
However, the moral responsibility falls on the bully, which in this
case is the US government.
The UK's principal judge rebuked Blair's proposals to eliminate
appeals for refusal of asylum, saying that moves in the direction
of arbitrary rule.
Blair's policy on all fronts has been to abolish rights
and move in the direction of arbitrary rule.
Jay Garner, the first man chosen by Bush to run Iraq, now says that
Bush fired him because he wanted early elections in Iraq and opposed
forced privatization.
The Bush campaign is selling clothing made in Burma.
In Spain, and in Israel, a leader whose unjust policies sparked terrorist
retaliation used the terrorism as an excuse to continue.
In Spain, the voters threw him out. When will Israel learn?
Rich countries have failed to take action against the companies whose
greed for gold and other minerals fueled the civil war in the Congo.
Many African civil wars are likewise driven by the profit of exporting
what can be dug from the ground.
Guantanamo prisoners describe how they were tortured by the US
officials who justified imprisoning them by false claims.
To imprison people based on the mere word of Bush, or a "tribunal" of
army officers that work for Bush, is a systematic recipe for
injustice.
A poll conducted in Iraq reports that many Iraqis now approve of the
invasion (though many do not), but none support the people Bush wants
to put in power there.
A year ago I wrote that invading a country to remove a dictator is
right when (1) the people of the country want to be liberated in this
way, and (2) we can be confident that the new regime installed by the
invaders will really be better. It's possible that Iraqis are coming
around to fulfill condition 1--if we can believe this poll--but Bush
will fight like the devil to steal Iraq's oil and privatize its
government, so he will never establish a regime that represents the
interests of the Iraqi public.
PBS newshour was embarrassed when guest Jim Parenti cited the failure
to reconstruct water and electricity and the corruption of Halliburton
as causes for instability in Iraq. So embarrassed, in fact, that it
made an apology that this report was not "balanced".
In the deceptive terminology of the mainstream media, "balanced" is
the way to say "not too far from the official line".
The Vancouver police found eight political activists walking home on
the street from a party, not doing anything political or criminal at
the time, and attacked them.
This illustrates the reason why even those who have "not done anything
wrong" have a reason to be concerned with whether the police are
allowed to track everyone and find out everything.
While Bush was planning to invade Iraq and using false claims about
nuclear weapons and ties to Al-Qa'ida as excuses, he was cozying up to
Pakistan, whose government was the center of nuclear weapons
proliferation as well as truly connected with the Taliban and
Al-Qa'ida. What was going on here?
The president of Poland said that someone had misled Poland about the
threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He didn't say that the
someone was Bush, but that's who it must have been.
Unfortunately, he could not bring himself to question the policy of
keeping Polish troops there. Perhaps the Polish voters will help him
see more alternatives.
The recently released Guantanamo prisoners describe the physical and
mental torture that they were subject to. One of them is maimed.
Before they're released they were pressured to sign false confessions.
The US government denies these accusations, but since the US
government is responsible for blocking independent observation of the
prison conditions, we must presume they are true until the US starts
permitting people to check them.
Aznar's party lost the election in Spain after it tried to use the
terrorist bombing for its political ends, says this commentator, who
explains the situation and its implications with care.
Iraqi insurgents operate false police checkpoints apparently staffed by the Bush-organized Iraqi police. They could be real members of the
Bush police force, operating at night against Bush.
Bush
gagged a US official who wanted to tell Congress and the public
what the administration really expected the Medicare bill to cost.
This just goes to show that you should never rely on what the Bush regime
says it is doing.
One of those convicted of planting the terrorist bombs in Bali is
appealing his conviction on the grounds that he was convicted under an
ex-post-facto law.
Given those facts, I support this decision. I would hope that the
perpetrators of the bombing will be imprisoned, but ex-post-facto laws
are more dangerous than terrorism. The court acted courageously in
refusing to allow a sensational crime to excuse such an attack on all
citizens' freedom.
I wonder why the prosecutors used the new law instead of prosecuting
the bombers for murder. I have a suspicion that the new law either
eliminates some safeguards against false convictions, or permits the
death penalty. If someone can check whether either of these is true,
and inform me, I would appreciate it.
The US government
published phoney interviews of Bush, with actors
posing as journalists, and phoney applause for phoney Bush speeches.
This seems to follow a pattern. I read that someone is touring the US
presenting the "burning Bush", whose pants are on fire.
Coca Cola's plants in Colombia have
forcibly locked workers inside the
plant, and threatened to fire them, to pressure them to give up their
contract. This conduct continues despite a court ruling against it.
This illustrates how corporations trample people's rights, when
governments become too friendly or close to the corporations and cease
to support the people against them. It is dangerous for government officials
to have a friendly attitude toward corporations.
A UN report says that ETA suspects are frequently tortured in Spain,
due to laws that make it easy for the police to cover up their actions.
The Spanish government tried to blame ETA for the recent bombings
in Madrid, but then it became clear ETA was not involved.
Microsoft supplied software to China which has been used for
identifying and imprisoning dissidents.
Microsoft software also tramples the freedom of its users. The
license says you can't share it, and you don't get the source code, so
you can't change it. Stay away from it, and use Free Software instead.
An Israeli youth who left Israel to refuse to participate
in the occupation wonders whether he ought to return to
Israel and spend years in prison.
Refusing to participate in oppression is not wrong, so he does not
deserve punishment for escaping. Just to leave home at age 18 like
this takes plenty of courage. So I do not believe he is obligated
to refuse only in the most heroic imaginable way, which is by staying
and being imprisoned.
However, if he is filled with the courage to go back and say "imprison
me" in order to achieve more for his cause, I will admire him even
more.
Prisoners released from Guantanamo describe torture and humiliation,
of which many prisoners bear permanent scars.
Alongside the major acts of cruelty are small cruelties with
disproportionate consequences. Denying prisoners toothpaste, if
continued for more than a short period, can cause mouth disease and
permanent loss of teeth.
A recently retired Air Force colonel reports how she saw
the Bush men distort the facts to justify attacking Iraq.
Israeli women report on how a fun holiday for children
casts a reflection of capricious cruelty in Palestine.
MoveOn is calling on Congress to censure of Bush for
embarking on a war based on lies that are now documented.
Gorillas in Congo are facing extinction due to mining of tantalum
to make capacitors for cell phones and computers.
The former Finnish prime minister is on trial for publishing information
about the Finnish president's dealings with Bush. (He was talking with
Bush about sending troops to Iraq.)
Rulers frequently use secrecy laws to shield their dirty dealings, and
often seek to punish those who expose them. Katharine Gun is a recent example.
But it is amazing to see that a whistle-blower in such a
high office is being put on trial for leaking information.
The implications of Dr. Khan's sale of nuclear secrets.
How the US destabilized the government of Haitian president Aristide.
We speak loosely of "armies" in connection with organized crime, but
in Israel the bank robbers can be the army.
20,000 Nicaraguan banana farm workers and relatives sued US
agribusiness companies for poisoning them with pesticides already
banned in the US. They won. But the companies ignored the decision
and sued the workers.
No court system can provide justice if rich businesses
can make a monkey of it.
A mother's show of nude photographs of her daughter was shut down by
the police in the UK.
This illustrates the level of paranoia now found in many western
countries about anything that connects children and sex. This, and
terrorism are the primary excuse for attacking civil liberties.
China may soon have difficulty feeding its population.
China is likely to buy grain from the US, driving up the price
of food for Americans who already have to pay a larger fraction
of their income than ever before for housing.
Due to the feebleness of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1980,
many areas are dominated by a few companies. Often they take advantage
of this to mistreat the small businesses they deal with. Cattle ranchers
just won a victory in court against the big 4 meat packing companies.
However, this victory results from a law that applies only to cattle.
So it won't translate into other areas of business unless we get
congressional representatives that are not on the side of big
business.
People are calling for a boycott of Nike for an ad
which depicts the aftermath of a suicide bombing.
I agree that it's not a good thing to use murder as
background for an ad--but aren't the sweatshops
enough reason not to buy from Nike?
Reportedly the
ad is a fake. Nonetheless, I hope you would not be attracted to
wearing clothing that advertises Nike.
The US and Pakistani governments are rushing to close the
case on Pakistan's contribution to nuclear proliferation.
Isn't that strange for a regime that is willing to use
fears of nuclear prolifieration as the basis for a war?
12% of bird species are threatened with extinction due to habitat
destruction.
Many species are protected in small refuges. Global warming may make
those refuges uninhabitable; some may be under water.
Insurance companies are preparing for claims due to natural disasters to increase exponentially as a result of global warming and increased
population.
Australia's attacks on civil liberties have gone on for a long time.
Albert Langer was imprisoned in 1997 for urging Australians to vote
refusing to express any preference between the two major parties.
(This way, one's ballot could not be counted towards either of them.)
This article praises the Australian political system as highly
democratic, but the truth is that the two major parties both kowtow to
the US and both are ready to abolish civil liberties. Democracy in
Australia is as sick as it is elsewhere in the world. The only
cure I can imagine is to eliminate the power of the corporations.
The Bliar government ordered the UK's chief scientist to keep silent
about global warming, to prevent embarrasment for Bush.
Blair gives higher priority to the danger of an unhappy Bush than
to the danger of global warning. What does that say about Bush?
There is International condemnation of the kidnaping of Aristide by Bush and his men.
Companies in the UK are using a law intended to prevent stalking to keep protestors miles away.
The injunctions prohibit not only protests, but reporting about them.
New information about the death of Dr. Kelly.
Hans Blix speaks at length about how the US impeded and distorted
the facts about Iraqi weapons.
A conviction for planning the 9/11 attacks has been overturned,
because the court ruled he had not received a fair trial. The US
government blocked a prisoner (himself held without trial) from
testifying as a witness.
A soldier has been punished for telling the press how bad the medical care is for soldiers injured while fighting in the Bush forces in Iraq.
The UK government plans a database listing all children in England
and their addresses, as well as other information. In the name of
protecting children, of course. This is one of several parallel plans
to impose a mandatory national ID card on everyone in the UK.
UK citizens should not accept any excuse to move in that direction.
Ashcroft's last (failed) election campaign raised funds illegally and
was fined. Now his campaign is using illegal methods to raise money
to pay the fine.
The Bush privatization arrangements in Iraq violate international law,
and the next Iraqi government could repudiate them. Only a sovereign
Iraqi government could give away Iraq's assets and make it "legal".
This is why Bush is hurrying to establish a nondemocratic provisional
puppet government in Iraq: so he can claim that an "Iraqi" government
agreed to give away the store.
How different is Kerry from Bush? Not very different in regard to
launching wars, it seems.
The author appears not to know about Congressman Kucinich
and his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but that doesn't
make the conclusions inaccurate about Kerry.
It is natural that people should try see in Kerry the hope to to
escape from the harmful Bush policies. But it is wishful thinking.
Hans Blix says that the invasion of Iraq violated international law.
Conservatives won the Iranian election, in which reformists were not
allowed to run. However, many voters boycotted the election.
Words fail to express what the Israeli occupation is doing to
Palestine--but killing over a thousand Palestinians in half a year
is just the beginning of it.
Three Palestinians were shot at a nonviolent protest against the land
division wall. One man tried to evacuate his dying brother in a car.
The car was shot with many bullets.
We don't know who set the bombs to kill Shi'ite worshipers in
Iraq, but Bush shares the responsibility for their deaths.
The Bush forces, having invaded Iraq, are morally responsible for the
violence that the invasion has produced, as well as legally
responsible for the safety of its citizens. It is fortunate that Sunnis and
Shi'ites have refused to be led into a civil war, and instead joined
in blaming Bush.
The US government has attacked freedom of the press, by threatening to
imprison publishers that edit and publish anything written in Iran,
Cuba, etc.
Australia faces the abolition of freedom of assembly,
as the Labor party gave its support to a law that would allow
the government to ban any organization by fiat.
This law could be used to abolish activist organizations, labor
unions, and even political parties. I've read elsewhere that the law
would also allow imprisonment of anyone who was a member of the banned
organization, or even raises money for its legal defense against this law.
Thus, freedom of the press and due process of law are being
attacked as well.
Blair announced plans to push people with disability pensions to
return to work.
What does this mean when there are not enough jobs already, and most
of them don't pay enough? It sounds like simply part of the
persistent world-wide campaign to concentrate wealth--to make life
harder and poorer for most people.
The Bliar regime threatened prosecution against former cabinet
minister Clare Short, after she informed the public of secrets
embarrassing to Tony Bliar.
The Transportation Security Administration is tyrannizing airline
passengers in the name of security.
If the TSA focused on security and respect for passengers, instead of
suppressing criticism, it might do a better job.
I've seen air security personnel manifest the spirit of a tyrant.
When confronted with disapproval of their actions, or even with a
practical demand such as "I can't hear you, would you please speak
louder?", they have a tendency to respond with a false accusation that
says, by implication, "I'll lie and call you a troublemaker, so you
won't be able to fly."
Such experiences tend to teach people to be subservient to petty
tyrants. I don't want to learn this, so I intentionally practice
expressing disapproval of foolish or unnecessarily annoying security
practices.
For future trips, I think I will print copies of that article so I can
hand them out while waiting in the line at the checkpoint.
Guy Philippe, perhaps the main leader of the Haitian rebels that
conquered Haiti with Bush's help, is an admirer of former dictator
Pinochet of Chile.
It is natural that Philippe would feel a kinship with Pinochet, who
also took power in a US-sponsored coup. Pinochet's men murdered large
numbers of people who opposed them politically. There is already some
indication that Mr Philippe wants to do likewise. If so, their deaths
will be on Bush's head.
The evidence that Dr. Kelly was killed is being
mostly ignored, but there's one last chance to talk
about it in court.
After Aristide was kidnaped by US troops, he phoned Randall Robinson
with a phone that someone provided to him on the sly. Here is Randall
Robinson's report of what Aristide said to him.
FBI misconduct in the Oklahoma City bombing case led to ignoring some
of the bomb plot participants.
The ANC, a businessman, and Saddam Hussein's regime have been accused
of participating together in a corrupt oil deal.
The deal is not proved, but merely letting an oil magnate pay
for a fancy dinner is already going too far.
Who would want to bomb Shi'ite civilians in Iraq, and why?
A Colombian opposes US demands for a US-Colombia free trade agreement.
US marines captured Haitian President Aristide and forced him onto a
plane; then Bush said Aristide had resigned his office voluntarily.
But Aristide manage to expose the lie. Meanwhile, former mass
murderers have taken control of Haiti, while Bush has sent forces to
help them take power.
Here is clarification of some of the false US media accusations
against Aristide.
There is one accusation I would like to get more info about. What
happened with the elections that were supposed to happen in Haiti this
year?
The US-supported opposition continues against Chavez, but he continues
to have strong popular support.
The US government has a pattern of engaging in economic warfare
against a country, and then accusing its leaders of "causing" economic
ruin. In a sense, they did--just as Winston Churchill "caused" the
aereal bombardment of London by not surrendering to the Nazis.
The culpability for the harm done by acts of aggression falls on the
aggressor, not on those who resist.
When Dubya's Secretary of Education called the National Education
Association "terrorist", he illustrated how loose and unjust official
US government definition of "terrorist" is now. All sorts of
opposition to government policy are defined as "terrorism", and Bush
is starting to threaten to prosecute traditional forms of democratic opposition. Follow this link, so you too can be a "terrorist".
Rumsfeld and Bush claim powers formerly reserved only for kings:
arbitrary imprisonment at their will.
The purpose of a trial is to protect the accused person from being
imprisoned without proof of charges. If the defendant is found
innocent, he will go free. The military tribunals that some
Guantanamo prisoners will get, instead of real trials, don't do this.
So the problem with these tribunals is not only that their rules are
unjust (which I've written about before). It's also that being found
innocent in a tribunal is meaningless. Even if some accused prisoner
is not convicted, that doesn't mean he will be released from prison.
If someone is convicted and sentenced, and serves out his "sentence",
that doesn't mean he will be released. The tribunal is a sham, and
the sentence is also a sham.
These tribunals are really show trials, intended (like Stalin's show
trials) to disguise imprisonment-at-will as something else. They may
be less numerous than the show trials of Stalinist Russia, but they
are no less tyranny.
The Israeli High Court
agreed to consider a petition to block the
construction of the separation wall around the village of Bidu after
Israelis joined Palestinians to protest it. The fence would
effectively turn the village into a prison, as it has already
done to other Palestinian villages.
A poor, aged woman in the UK has become a tax protestor because the
recent tax increases are more than she can afford on her fixed
pension. A cabinet minister lectured her about how everyone has a
duty to "obey the law".
However, there is no automatic ethical duty to obey laws, however
harmful or unjust they might be. Moral authority for a law, or for
the government that establishes the law, is not automatic; both must
earn it. The Blair government, by making a habit of twisting laws,
has squandered its moral authority, and is no longer in a position to
lecture anyone about moral duty.
I am not sure precisely how council taxes are computed, but it is
clear that one way or another this tax increase goes back to Blair
policies that favor concentration of wealth.
The Colombian government has
arrested a human rights organization's
leader.
The Haiti Action Committee says that Haiti's president Aristide is the
victim of a
protracted US-orchestrated campaign, like that aimed
against Venezuela.
Another article says that
both the US and France are targeting
President Aristide for removal.
The main accusation I have heard levied against Aristide
is that he held an unfair election for the legislature.
I'm interested in hearing the facts about what happened
in that election.
Former UK cabinet minister Clare Short says that charges against
Katharine Gun were dropped because she was going to make people in the
Blair administration
come into court and testify about how they
decided to launch the war.
She also reveals that the UK spied on UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan.
Now the UK government proposes to
change the Official Secrets Act,
probably to make it harder for heroes like Katharine Gun to
escape punishment in the future.
Canada has
proposed a law to imprison people for watching foreign
TV stations. That's the sort of law you'd expect in China or Iran.
(I have ethical misgivings about the existing legal system that
applies to these encrypted satellite channels.)
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