Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
The electronic remote voting systems being tried in the UK, US and other countries are extremely vulnerable to fraud.
For more information about the dangers of electronic voting, see http://www.fipr.org/eDemocracy/index.html.
Postal voting used in the UK is already opening up avenues for fraud (which electronic voting will exacerbate).
That article also points out the fundamental fallacy underlying the supposed reason for electronic voting. The reason for low turnout is that many voters see that none of the candidates will represent their interests against the powerful few.
Even mechanical voting machines can function in a way that systematically loses votes for one party.
The US proposes to develop nuclear weapons for attacking bunkers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
I get the feeling that Bush and Rumsfeld are not satisfied with nuclear deterrence--they want to actually use nuclear weapons. I am not the only one. The Bush policies have devastated the international diplomatic efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
Temporal-lobe epilepsy has been found to enhance religious feelings, and at least some religious visions are directly caused by it.
The US TV news service for Iraq is operated by a studio controlled
by fundamentalist Christians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bush forces
have searched the 90 most likely places to find some
Iraqi biological or chemical weapons; they found none.
Nonetheless, Bush continues to say some will be found.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
It is also interesting to note how Dubya's statement implies that the repeated Pentagon statements that "everything was going precisely according to plan" were falsehoods. They were speaking for effect, not telling the truth. What's interesting is that they feel that the idea that Saddam's forces could even force a small change of plans is too much weakness to admit. The arrogance, and the denial, are colossal.
Madonna posted fake songs on the Internet; the audio files which
purported to contain her songs actually contained absurd messages that
liken the sharing of music to attacking ships (piracy).
[Reference updated on 2018-09-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
People had a field day editing these songs into "cutups" that express the opposite view.
Record companies treat musicians worse than you could imagine; and when you buy the typical commercial CD, the amount that the musicians get is zero. The few exceptions are musicians like Madonna that have been very successful for a long time have the chance and the clout to negotiate better contracts. If you buy a Madonna CD, she really does get some of the money. But she, unlike most musicians, doesn't need it.
All governments are supposed to help people fleeing persecution. Nowadays, governments (especially in Europe) treat asylum seekers cruelly in order to chase them away, while pretending that most asylum requests are phony
A
new study shows that most people seeking asylum in the UK are
fleeing from dictatorships.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Even as Blair was talking about how horrible Saddam Hussein was, refugees from Iraq were being denied asylum in the UK, which claimed they were only looking only for a better economy.
WHO made a report on health effects of eating sugar. Sugar companies
don't like it and are trying to pressure WHO to change it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
I don't think food companies should have any control over recommendations made by public bodies.
The city of Arcata, California, has voted to order its police
not to cooperate with the USA PAT-RIOT Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
It has adopted an
ordinance prohibiting "unconstitutional" cooperation with the act
by the city's employees.
[Reference updated on 2018-09-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Companies are trying to pass a law in Ohio and other states to
restrict the government from providing government information to the
public.
The aim is to force citizens to go through companies instead.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The attitude seems to be that the government should not serve the public; that it exists to make people pay money to companies. If you live in Ohio or know someone there, please tell your legislators you object.
An interesting article on whether computers really need to be easier to use than they are now.
Journalists, actors and musicians in the US face the threat of being fired
or otherwise punished if they criticize Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
If we had a president who believed in freedom, he would be criticizing this.
Due to a toxic chemical plant in Sicily, 6% of local babies
are born deformed.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Meanwhile, it turns out the KGB tried to warn about the danger of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, which subsequently exploded, but its warnings were ignored.
Hans Blix, the chief of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, says the US
undermined his efforts to hunt for NBC weapons in Iraq. The rest of
the security council, all but the US, want to send him back to Iraq to
finish the job. Bush, of course,
wants only his forces to search for Iraqi weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
It is interesting that Bush spokesmen now warn that "Iraqi agents might have been able to destroy incriminating materials in the days of chaos that followed the taking of Baghdad". When the Bush forces chose not to stop the systematic arson that destroyed Iraqi government records, I suggested that their motive might be to create an excuse for the absence of any evidence of banned Iraqi weapons. Whether or not they made that calculation, they are now using the excuse.
This all makes sense if Bush has known all along that there would be no evidence because there were no such weapons.
Why does Bush now oppose the return of Blix and his inspectors? Perhaps the Bush forces intend to plant phony evidence.
A journalist writes,
"I
saw Marines Kill Civilians".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Iraqi Shiites are holding large protests because the Bush military
government arrested one of their leaders. Other Shiite leaders
are calling for sustained protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
This also reports that the Bush forces have persistently prevented an investigation of why their troops killed British journalist Terry Lloyd.
They attacked three different groups of journalists in one day as they were taking Baghdad; for the attack on the Palestine Hotel, they made the excuse that someone was shooting at them from there, but this was proved false by the tape made by another journalist, which recorded no shots before the tank shot at the hotel. Putting the coverup alongside this pattern of known attacks on journalists, we have to suspect that the Bush forces may have deliberately killed Terry Lloyd.
Maher Hawash, a US citizen of Palestinian origin, was arrested by
federal agents who refused to release him or
to charge him with any crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Due to public pressure, the government has not been able to toss him in a dungeon and throw away the key. A judge ruled that he cannot be held indefinitely, and gave the Bush regime a time limit.
Licensed to Kill, Inc., is incorporated in the state of Virginia for the explicit purpose of "the manufacture and marketing of tobacco products in a way that each year kills over 400,000 Americans and 4.5 million other persons worldwide."
Indian scientists genetically engineered a potato to produce
more protein. Instead of patenting this, they will make it available
(after tests)
for farmers to grow and use freely.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The article's author used the confusing and biased term "intellectual property"; please try to avoid doing that yourself. See this.
White House cultural advisers resigned because Bush
failed to protect the National Museum of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-09-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
A summary of the situation in and regarding Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-09-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Americans face yet another attack on their freedom.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The first target, as usual, is foreigners living in the US, but an attack on US citizens cannot be far behind.
One way to judge whether US and
Bush forces have committed real war
crimes is to compare their actions against the
standards set by the US at Nuremberg.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
US troops shot civilians in Mosul when they started yelling during a speech
by Mashaan Al-Juburi,
imposed by the Bush forces as "governor".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Bush forces
said they were fired on first and that they did not
fire on the crowd--but the dead and wounded in the crowd say that
cannot be true.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Similar events in the US include the Boston Massacre, which contributed to the American Revolution, and the massacre at Kent State, which contributed to the exit of US troops from Viet Nam.
Mosul is in Kurdistan, which has been running since the first Gulf War under its own somewhat-democratic government, but they did not control Mosul (Saddam did). Bush promised Turkey that the Kurds would not control Mosul; which means, I suppose, that Mosul gets Bush-appointed rulers, who stay in power by shooting the public instead of by winning elections.
Although I do not advocate Christianity, I think it is interesting
that the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem has decided that
Bush and Blair, and their ministers of war,
are not allowed entry.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Although the details of the cause of the Columbia disaster were
probably a complex series of accidents, the deeper cause was cuts in
the NASA budget, which had the shuttle program operating at the bare
edge of safety.
They created a situation ripe for disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
A similar combination of circumstances led in the 1870s to famines in
India and China that killed 30 to 50 million people. While the
immediate cause of the famines was failure of the monsoon rains,
related to El Niño, the deeper cause, the reason the bad harvest
caused so many deaths, was political: the British had forced these
countries to participate in a system of world trade on disadvantageous
terms.
This weakened the systems that had cushioned the population from previous famines.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
In other words, forced globalization killed more people than Stalin or Mao.
There is evidence tying British army officers to
protestant death squads that operated in Northern Ireland in the 80s.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Some 200-300 Iraqis in Baghdad protested the occupation of their
country. The Bush forces
tried to prevent media coverage of the
protest,
saying that media coverage encourages protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Bush forces had no objection to media coverage when a similar number of Iraqis cheered as Bush forces pulled down Saddam's statue. So it's not that they object to television; they merely want it to be one-sided and biased. Can people who don't believe in democracy and human rights possibly establish an Iraqi government that respects them?
Meanwhile, 20,000 Iraqis protested in Naririya, saying "No to America, No to Saddam".
One of the difficulties any Iraqi government will face is the existence
of armed militias, Afghanistan-style.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US-selected Iraqi opposition leaders, meeting to discuss how to establish democracy in Iraq, considered many difficult issues.
The main point that MacIntyre argues is a red herring. When says that "No one...can argue that democracy is suddenly unimportant or unexportable just because it is advocated by right-wing Republicans," he attacks a straw man. The real point is that Bush doesn't really support democracy in Iraq. It is just talk.
Despite the good news that unsubstantiated charges were dropped
against two OCAP activists, three activists still face fabricated
charges of "participating in a riot" in Montreal. The riot's only
real participants were the rampaging police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The history of Iraq for the past century is a struggle by great powers
over control of Iraq's oil reserves.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Bush forces
have imposed a curfew on Baghdad, but they have not
restored the electricity or water supplies that they destroyed, or
tried to identify Saddam's torturers. They said it would take
"forensic tests" to see if their bombs had killed Saddam Hussein,
but they did not even bother to dig out the bodies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
And there is evidence that people are being paid to burn government buildings, substantiating the suspicion I voiced earlier this week. I wonder why? Is Bush trying to create an excuse for failing to find the supposed weapons of mass destruction that were the supposed reason for the war? Is he destroying evidence of the past collusion between Saddam Hussein and the US government?
Belgium has changed the law that enabled victims of mass murder to sue
officials such as Ariel Sharon and Henry Kissinger for their
responsibility in the acts.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The law now exempts officials in governments with democratic credentials. Does engineering consent within one country make mass murder excusable?
The murder of a bouncer in a New York bar should not be a reason to change the law on using tobacco in bars.
Tobacco is dangerous drug, but prohibiting it entirely would be unjust (and would do more harm than good). People should be free to smoke tobacco, like the less dangerous marijuana, in their homes or outdoors. However, prohibiting tobacco smoking in bars, especially those where music is played, might greatly reduce the fraction of adults who become heavy users. Many young people go there and experience social pressure to use tobacco.
Blair says that Bush has no plans to invade Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-09-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
When Blair talks about what Bush will do, he often engages in persistent wishful thinking. We cannot believe what he says. However, the lack of even UK support for another attack may do something to restrain Dubya.
Or perhaps he is simply lying.
Amnesty International has accused the
Bush forces in Iraq of
protecting Iraqi oil and neglecting its responsibility to protect Iraqi people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
As chaos and violence swallow Baghdad, Bush and his men call it
liberation.
Iraqis increasingly disagree.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Bush invasion is increasing the hostility among the ethnic groups in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
These ethnic divisions go back a long ways, but were stirred up by the former US-backed strongman in Iraq, Saddam Hussein.
Naomi Klein argues that conquering Iraq is
Dubya's new method of
introducing corporate-dominated "free" trade, bypassing the need for
messy negotiations.
However, Noam Chomsky has a partly different view.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Why Bush will not do what it takes to bring peace to Palestine.
The Bush forces dropped bombs in Iraq that are full of poison gas--but that's ok, since they explode it after poisoning people with it.
The National Museum of Iraq held priceless relics from the dawn of
civilization. Now they have been destroyed by looters who seem to
have smashed more than they stole.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Reading this article filled me with anguish. The destruction of history is an immense tragedy because nothing can ever replace it.
The history in that museum was your history and my history, the
history of the people whose great invention, writing, we are using
now. The museum was smashed by poor, uneducated Iraqis, who did not
value their people's history. Poor, uneducated Americans who did not
value their people's history (which also began in Iraq) didn't bother
to prevent it. Rich, maleducated Americans, who care nothing for
anyone's history, gave them no orders to intervene. People around the
world
condemn the Bush forces for failing to protect the museum.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The destruction of the museum was followed by the
burning of the national archives.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
These archives went back just a few hundred years; they don't cover ancient civilization, merely the history of Iraq since Ottoman times. Some records were deposited there during Saddam Hussein's rule, and when Robert Fisk asks "Why," I have to wonder if Bush did this to destroy records of something that George I did, before the first Gulf War, when he still supported Saddam Hussein.
Officials involved in planning the war for Bush are in many cases connected with companies such as Bechtel that expect to profit from it.
Remember when Republicans stood for "fiscal responsibility"? That was an excuse for one part of their goal: to cut spending on programs that benefit ordinary citizens. When it comes to spending on the rich, or cutting their taxes, they forget all about "fiscal responsibility".
Reportedly quoted from a speech in Congress on CSPAN:
Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are united in our prayers for the success and safety of our men and women in combat. The powers that be have brought to this floor a highly divisive budget resolution. This budget resolution is designed to enrich the rich at the expense of economic growth for all America. It means larger budget deficits, higher interest rates, larger trade deficits. It will take capital out of the private sector and away from business investments while underinvesting in education and infrastructure.
But I rise to address another point, another flaw in this budget resolution; and I will do so with an analogy to a credit card advertisement that we are all familiar with.
Allowing corporations to get out of paying American taxes just by renting a hotel room in the Bahamas, $4 billion; ending taxes on all dividends, $385 billion; ending the estate tax even on the largest estates, $662 billion; knowing Members can pass the entire cost of all of this to future generations, priceless. RepubliCard, it is everything the super rich want it to be.
Also available, the new Deficit Express Card soon with a $4.2 trillion credit limit. The Deficit Express Card, do not leave the House without it.
An Israeli soldier deliberately shot international monitor Tom Hurndall in the head, for no reason, says another international monitor who witnessed the attack. Hurndall is now a breathing corpse.
Perhaps the Israeli government has told soldiers not to worry about killing the international monitors. Or perhaps the Israeli government's non-reaction to the killing of Rachel Corrie constitutes a tacit ok for any more killings. That way would be safer, more deniable--but ethically there's no difference. Soldiers or police who are controlling a people who oppose them can easily come to hate them and be glad to have an opportunity to hurt or kill. Whatever government they work for has the moral responsibility to make it clear this is not going to be tolerated.
A week ago I spoke with someone in California who had recently seen a driver deliberately run over a protester. A San Francisco policewoman who watched it happen said she did not care. She apparently already has come to hate the people in her own city, when they protest.
Don't
be fooled by a toppling statue.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Trying to explain to Arabs that it's not that Americans hate Arabs,
just that Americans are extremely credulous.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Santa Cruz, CA, library
assiduously destroys its records every day
to prevent the US government from doing blanket
surveillance on its patrons.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Activists in San Francisco protested a software company which is developing surveillance technology.
The company has Richard Perle on
its board; Perle recently resigned from the Defense Policy Board
because his other corrupt business connections were causing too much
scandal.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
An Australian has literally patented the wheel, as a demonstration of the absurdly low standards of the Australian patent office (and other patent offices).
The article unfortunately describes patent law as an "intellectual property law". The term "intellectual property" is fashionable but misleading; by lumping together patents, copyrights, trademarks and various other laws, it encourages people to think about them all at once in a simplistic fashion. I urge you not to use that term.
The World Water Forum did not go according to plan for the
multinational water companies that thought they controlled it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
However, the outcome still was not very good.
The EU governments are pressuring poor countries to allow European companies to privatize their drinking water supplies. Many Europeans don't like this, and it is becoming a scandal.
It's
like undertakers burning down a house, then squabbling about who gets to make the coffins.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Thai police are systematically murdering thousands of Thais, usually
people they believe are using marijuana or other illegal drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Some of the victims are unsavory characters who might have deserved to be convicted of a crime. Others are not. None of them had a trial.
Tariq Ayoub, the Al Jazeera journalist killed by the Bush forces, described by a Western colleague.
Assuming the Bush forces finish the conquest of Iraq,
what
to do with it will be a harder problem.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
On March 24 I wrote,
Saddam Hussein being a dictator, and one who kills often, it would be worth hundreds of lives--even innocent people's lives--to overthrow him, if only we could be confident that the people of Iraq wanted to be liberated (who knows?) and that the replacement would really be much better. But anyone appointed by Dubya is unlikely to be much better. We can get a good idea of the sort of ruler that the US is likely to impose by looking at the last ruler the US supported in Iraq. His name: Saddam Hussein.
Many Iraqis now seem to be glad to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Whether the replacement imposed by Bush will be better is yet to be seen. His two nominees to rule Iraq are an American arms dealer (Garner) and a former Iraqi who left Iraq in 1956. If Iraqis don't like those rulers, will the new regime use the support of Bush to build up a repressive system to stay in power?
Will Bush give Iraq real democracy where citizens have real rights, Bush-style fake democracy where rights are just facades, or Saddam-style dictatorship? His words, of course, say the first. The actions are pointing toward one of the other two.
In Serbia, members of a major political opposition party, led by Kostunica, have been arrested and accused of plotting with gangsters the assassination of Djindjic.
Serbians have told me that the politicians are all corrupt. It's not implausible that Kostunica's party was involved with gangsters. Djindjic also was widely accused of being involved with gangs, and shortly after the assassination, police arrested an anarchist merely for saying that "a criminal was killed by other criminals". So it is not implausible that Djindjic's party is using this excuse to frame supporters of Kostunica.
School kids in the UK got a practical lesson in democracy--and
in tyranny--as they literally escaped from lock-up in school in order to
practice civil disobedience to protest the war.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Journalists have counted 1000 Iraqi civilians killed mostly by Bush
forces. The total must be much larger. Thousands of civilians have
been wounded in the fighting in Baghdad.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
I will make a prediction: that the Bush military government in Iraq will impede attempts to identify and count the civilian casualties, so that Americans won't think about them.
Remember the Iraqi chemical weapons suits that Rumsfeld said were
proof that Iraq had and would use chemical weapons? This article
reports that Rumsfeld himself said the US might use chemical weapons in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israeli fighters often assassinate terrorist suspects rather than
trying to arrest them, and they often kill bystanders in the process.
It almost doesn't count as news any more. This time, they fired
second
time at the crowd who gathered after the first attack.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
It reminds me of a terrorist tactic: explode a second bomb a few minutes after the first, so as to target those who come to the scene of the explosion.
Almost 1% of the Palestinian population has been killed by Israeli attacks. Something like half the Palestinian population has experienced prison-like curfew conditions for weeks on end.
Looking beyond Iraq: the US may try to take control of other oil-producing countries, to defend US economic domination from the competition that the euro poses for the dollar.
A brief introduction to the modern history of the Middle East.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
As the Bush forces
crow about military victories,
let's not let their attacks on journalists be buried
under happy-talk news.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
This article by an angry journalist also provides information
about a
longer series of attacks on independent journalists in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
As Bush forces take control, we must be concerned that they will exclude from Iraq any journalists that might criticize Bush policy. I've heard that Kate Adie was excluded from Iraq by the Bush forces before the war.
Holding Iraq when its people want the
Bush forces out may be much
harder than conquering it. The US intervention in Afghanistan--which
I supported at the time--
is going badly now.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bush won't be so quick to ignore Iraq and its oil. What is more likely in Iraq is that, Bush forces will do whatever is "necessary" to make sure the new "democratic" regime remains in power--including supporting a new strongman who will act like the last US-supported strongman in Iraq (Saddam Hussein).
Everyone concerned with freedom in the US should learn about the bill known as "son of patriot" that the Bush administration is drawing up.
They plan to cancel people's citizenship if they participate in protests, punish use of encryption, prohibit witnesses from saying what their testimony was, collect everyone's credit records just by asking (i.e. total information awareness). And many other things. A law professor wrote this article.
Nowadays you may have trouble finding out if your spouse has been arrested without charges. But if you do find out, you can tell the ACLU or the press. This bill would make it a crime to tell. The government would have official power to disappear people, and prohibit all mention of what has happened to them. Americans would have to look to overseas to find out what has happened to their missing family members, or for information about what the government is doing.
The bill attaches conditions to some these powers, but as the article explains, the conditions are easy to satisfy. We've already seen that Bush's men are happy to stretch the law quite far to do what they want. They are already doing some of these things, even though the legality of them is questionable. They would run right over the conditions.
On April 8, Bush forces made
several separate attacks on journalists in Baghdad,
killing several. This appears to have been a deliberate
attempt to silence independent reporting on the war--in particular, on
the civilian casualties caused by the
Bush forces' attack on Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-09-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Bush forces did what they typically do: cite false excuses, such as that someone in the Palestine Hotel was shooting at them. Bush convinced most Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks just by saying so repeatedly for a year. He probably figures now that he can get away with any lie just by sticking to it.
Reuters' chief said that
"US
troops...have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Yesterday I referred to an article suggesting that the mafia was a good model for understanding what the Bush forces say. This incident provides a perfect example. On the radio today, a Bush spokesperson was quoted as saying that the war zone is a dangerous place for journalists to be, and warning journalists to leave (i.e., stop covering the war). Just like our image of a mafia protection racket, the Bush forces present threats in the guise of warnings.
Imposing democracy by force is difficult and problematical-- even when you sincerely try.
This problem may not be a concern for Bush. Talking about democracy is a lot easier than practicing it.
If Bush forces
deprive Iraqi civilians of access to safe water, that
is a war crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bush said that if Iraqis "take innocent life, if they destroy infrastructure, they will be held accountable as war criminals." Shouldn't the same standard apply to Bush?
Nine of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board have known ties to large military contractors.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The board's charter is to provide independent, informed advice; but it can't be independent of the wishes of those contractors.
To understand the real meaning of what Bush and Blair and their people say, model them on Al Capone.
The model is not lost on Israeli militants, who cite Bush as
justification for both actual and proposed brutality and censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
If Bush forces have military victory in Iraq, that won't excuse the lies they have told.
Chimps and gorillas are now in critical danger. Their population has been cut in half in 20 years.
Israeli fighters in a tank shot one of the an international witnesses. Fortunately not fatally.
It looks like Israeli forces are trying to nerve themselves to kill the international witnesses at will.
Gloucester-shire police in the UK are twisting an "anti-terrorism" law
into an excuse to harass protesters. They search the protesters
over and over--not that they expect to find anything.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US has historically been an advocate of "rule of law" and of multilateral solutions to global problems. The Bush regime has largely turned its back on this approach. For a thorough account of how the US has disregarded, undermined or blocked various treaties, see this [pdf].
Mia Couto, elsewhere described as Mozambique's leading writer, condemns the Bush regime's hypocritical policies, towards Africa, Iraq, "terrorism", and the rest of the world.
I've been thinking for a while about how to respond to the argument that we have a duty as Americans to "support our troops" now that they are at war. My conclusion is that they are not "our troops" any more--not if "us" means "US". These troops were previously the US armed forces, but since Bush took over the US government and sent them to Iraq, they are now the Bush armed forces. They aren't ours now. They are not fighting for their country when they fight his private war.
The support that these troops deserve, above all, is to be once again
So when people tell you that "we" should support "our" troops, respond
that the way to support them is to take away Bush's power to misuse
them.
Some 25 neoconservatives are the architects of Bush's war against Iraq.
Outside the US, the irregular tactics of Saddam's fighters are
being widely applauded.
I do not entirely agree with the views of that article. Even in a
guerrilla war, forcing civilians to be shields for fighting is wrong.
I cannot condone this for Iraqi forces any more than I condone it for
Israeli forces. Faking surrender is also wrong, since it undermines
the idea of surrender; it can put the other side in a position where
it dare not accept the surrender of defeated soldiers, but must kill
them instead; the end result is inhumane.
However, the Saddam forces are not the only ones that are using
tactics that are inherently inhumane and unacceptable. The Bush
forces are using depleted uranium and cluster bombs, which will kill
civilians long after the war is over. They are bringing in too little
food to feed the civilian population; they are bombing electrical
plants, which makes the water supply stop functioning. Even before
Bush took power, the US kept essential medicine out of Iraq for years,
causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. I don't believe
that one of these wrongs justifies the other, but on the balance, the
greater evil falls on the Bush side.
Homeland Security Agents are stealing information from libraries
that they don't want the public to see.
Bush forces
are already bring US-style freedom of the press to Iraq.
They Iraq imprisoned two Portuguese journalists, battered them, and starved them for days, for no reason they can imagine.
It's just
like the way police treat journalists in the US.
Statements about the war from the Bush and Blair regimes are so
predictably dishonest that we can actually have fun with it.
When Robert Fisk presented evidence that a US missile destroyed a market
in Baghdad, the response from the Blair regime was
denial and attack, and when
US
forces were reported to have taken Baghdad's airport, Robert Fisk went there and found no sign of them.
Israeli fighters arrested every man in Tulkarm,
then released most of them miles away with no food, telling
them not to go home for three days.
Arundhati Roy writes about the war.
A
setback for Berlusconi: he tried to pass a law in Italy
to legitimize his ownership of the three main TV channels,
but parts of his own governing coalition refused to support it.
Blair wants to be able to revoke the citizenship of an immigrant
merely for "acting against the UK's vital interests", an expression
that could easily include criticizing or thwarting government policy.
For instance, helping people in another country to organize to oppose
privatization of their water supply could easily be labeled as
"acting against the UK's vital interests".
Cluster bombs dropped by the Bush forces are killing civilians in
Iraq. Like landmines, the bomblets remain dangerous to civilians even
after the battle is over--especially to children, who tend to think
they are interesting.
Even inside the Bush regime
there is opposition to the plan to set up
a US military government in Iraq.
However, it seems that both of the factions in the regime are planning
a government for Iraq that is dominated by Americans.
The reports of an uprising in Basra were based on a little
inconclusive information, dressed to look like more than it was.
Here's an analysis of the dressing-up process.
The Global Political Restaurant today serves only three dishes:
Imperialism, Terrorism and Dictatorship. Sooner or later you'll have
to eat them all.
The hypocrisy of Bush, and Blair's persistent willful blindness, are
turning voters in Pakistan towards the extremists who have hated the
west for a long time.
Note that Pakistan actually has nuclear weapons (whereas Iraq
is merely suspected of wanting them). Note also that the
fundamentalists who gain strength in reaction to Bush are the same
ones that seek to oppress women and unbelievers.
When Bush forces
bomb civilians, they try to deflect the outrage by
saying that "It could have been an enemy missile which was fired at
our aircraft and missed." They did this last week when civilians in a
Baghdad market were killed, figuring that if they can cast even a tiny
doubt on who was responsible, it would weaken world condemnation.
But the missile has now been identified as US-made.
But suppose it had been an Iraqi missile--would that really change the
ethical responsibility? The Iraqi forces are simply defending their
country from foreign invaders; if they accidentally kill some of their
people with unintended "friendly fire", that's the invader's fault.
If Iraqis wanted to be liberated, if they really felt that the Bush
forces were their rescuers and Saddam's forces were occupiers, that
would reverse the logic; then Saddam would be ethically responsible
for the deaths in that market, regardless of who fired the missile.
But all real evidence says that Iraqis do not want this. Only Bush
and his cronies say they do.
Meanwhile, not all the claims of harm to civilians by
Bush forces
are really valid.
While Tony Blair pretends to be influencing Bush to let the UN
establish a new government in Iraq, the Bush regime already has a
secret plan for how to rule Iraq.
Various countries are cutting their support for Bush and his war,
or denying that they had ever supported it.
Bush forces in Iraq killed 7 unarmed civilians in a car.
They were probably afraid the car contained suicide bombers.
There is a sinister side to the use of suicide bombing in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein must calculate that this will lead to killings of
unarmed civilians by the Bush forces,
and thus spur Iraqi hatred for
the invaders. I doubt that either Hussein or Bush sincerely mourns
these Iraqi civilians, but since their deaths will tend to benefit
Hussein and hurt Bush, we can expect Bush to pretend to care.
British soldiers, who were fighting in the
Bush forces in Iraq, are
being punished for expressing dismay at the number of civilians being killed there.
NBC gave in to pressure from Bush and fired reporter Peter Arnett.
The excuse for the pressure was, it appears, that Arnett gave an
interview to Iraqi TV. But why shouldn't he? The real reason appears
to be that he presented Americans with a side of the war that Bush
does not want them to have.
Arnett is going to work for a newspaper in the UK, where such
censorship is not as strong.
Civilians in Basra condemn the
Bush forces as well as Saddam Hussein's
rule.
Meanwhile, Dubya's
lieutenants, in the US and the UK, are desperately
insisting that nothing's wrong, and all the surprises they have
encountered have not altered their decisions in the slightest.
When you think about it, that is strange. It's intelligent and normal
for general who encounters a surprise to change his plans, so why
should these generals try so hard to deny they have changed anything?
I think it's because they seek to present an image of unchallengeable
superiority. The idea of even a partial or temporary reverse for the
US is supposed to be unthinkable; therefore, when it happens, they
cannot admit it.
Israeli fighters attacked a Palestinian police post,
then kept the ambulance away while two Palestinian policemen
slowly bled to death.
Because of the police conduct described in other notes, I have a low
opinion of police in general. But the death penalty is too extreme,
for police or anyone else.
A respected judge says that the US invasion of Iraq puts
international law (such as the Geneva convention) at risk.
If the superpower ignores these treaties, others will feel
entitled to do likewise.
Imagine that Saddam starts treating captured US soldiers exactly as
the prisoners Bush holds in Guantanamo Bay are treated. Would Bush
treat his prisoners humanely in exchange for similar conduct by
Saddam? Or would Bush denounce this as a "war crime"--the crime of
doing what only Bush is allowed to do?
I hope Bush has the sense to start treating prisoners humanely
according to the Geneva convention now, and foreclose that option
for Saddam.
Meanwhile, the former head of the Pentagon's depleted uranium
munitions project denounces use of depleted uranium weapons as a war
crime,
because they poison the land.
The ex-general Bush chose to be the ruler of Iraq is also
an arms dealer, making money from the war.
In the first Gulf War, before the word "patriot" was tainted by
association with a law to attack our freedom, the army tried to use
the Patriot missile to intercept and destroy Iraqi Scud missiles.
People thought at the time that this was working, but later analysis
showed that the Patriot missile had not really done anything to the
Scuds.
A news report says
Bush was misled by members of his cabinet who said that the war in Iraq would be a walkover,
and that warnings from
intelligence agencies were kept away from him.
Bush even had warning that Iraq would use suicide bombers, but
apparently ignored it. As Bush proposes new laws to give the
government agencies more power to collect information from and about
us, he's clearly aiming where the enemy is not.
What we really need are laws against officials that refuse
to listen to the information that these agencies collect.
Some countries are jealous about being left out of the
"axis of evil".
The bluefin tuna population off the US East Coast is under 1/10 of
what it was in 1970, so fishing is restricted. But the restrictions
are not working to protect the tuna's numbers, because tuna move
between the US shores and Europe.
A secret police unit in Serbia has been disbanded after its members
were accused of selling drugs and murdering the Prime Minister of Serbia.
A reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle has been suspended because
he was
arrested with 1400 others at an anti-war protest.
Oil workers in Colombia are planning a general strike,
fighting against privatization plans.
88 members of the oil workers' union have been assassinated
in recent years.
Bombardment by Bush forces
cut off the supply of drinking water in
Basra, so
much of the populace is fleeing in desperation.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera's reporter in Basra shows how civilians there
are being killed by these bombardments.
Police in Colombia are attacking shanty-towns whose inhabitants
have nowhere to go.
Bush is Acting Like a Judicially-Selected Dictator.
Some people seem to think that Bush won the election because of Nader,
but this isn't true. Bush did not win the election--in particular,
not in Florida--and the reason he came even close to winning there
was because his Katherine Harris arranged to stop tens of thousands
of blacks from voting.
3 million protestors opposed the war in Spain on March 22.
The Al-Jazeera web site has been down for days because of a barrage
of spam coming from Americans who object to its coverage of
unpleasant facts about the war.
The higher the US officials, the
less honest they are about the situation in Iraq.
Opposition to the war, in the US and the UK, is even more important
now than it was before the war started--because this is the only
thing holding the administration back from bombarding cities and
killing civilians by the thousands. And if Bush wins, he will be
tempted to let Iraq turn to chaos and call it "success", as in
Afghanistan.
In yet another attack on civil liberties, the UK
plans to take DNA samples from everyone who is arrested.
This provides a fairly straightforward way to produce
a national DNA registry for improves surveillance of all
citizens. After all, it's easy to arrest people; it's
not unusual to be arrested just for being near a protest.
A similar proposal is just one of the dangerous provisions of "Son of
patriot", which is Dubya's
plan for the next attack on freedom in the US.
A TV reporter was arrested in DC just for filming the police arresting the driver of a truck.
Robert Fisk says that Iraqi officials are
giving more information about the war than the US,
and in general the Iraqi information is
accurate.
The New World Order means,
"The
Anglo-Saxons Are Coming".
Halliburton, Cheney's former oil company (which still pays him),
has got a big contract for rebuilding Iraq after the Bush-Cheney
administration destroys it.
Meanwhile Dubya's
choice for the man to rule Iraq for the US,
supposing the US conquers Iraq, has links to a right-wing group
connected with Cheney and with Israel.
The WTO and the US war machine.
As Secy of Defense Rumsfeld criticizes Iraq for violating the Geneva
convention on treatment of prisoners, let's not forget the US
violations he is personally responsible for.
Salmon farms in Scotland are passing diseases to wild salmon,
whose numbers are in sharp decline.
A media company is paying for pro-war rallies in the US.
OCAP members organized a protest campaign by high-schoolers in Ontario against a new standardized test.
When the test was leaked before
it was used, members of OCAP were threatened with imprisonment.
If they elected a monkey as
President of the United States, Tony Blair
would ingratiate himself and do its bidding...
Considering the photos of Curious George, I monkey as president might
not be such a big difference.
Uri Avnery's thoughts about the war.
The islamist government of Kelantan, in Malaysia, has taken a small
step towards respect for human rights. Instead of banning traditional
art forms, now it only censors them for unislamic elements.
Benetton
plans to insert radio tracking chips in all its clothing.
These chips are not designed for tracking individuals, but they can be
used for that purpose easily enough. They contain unique identifying
numbers. Once a centralized tracking agency finds out which numbers
are in your clothing, it can identify you every time you pass by a
scanner. Connecting the numbers with you is easy if you buy clothes
by credit card, but they can also build the data base in other ways.
This won't be terribly effective if only Benetton uses the chips--but
if the system works well for them, it could be adopted by all companies
in five years time.
It would be useful to develop a reliable method of frying these chips
with ordinary household equipment. I wonder if a microwave oven
can do it.
I think it would be useful for the public to put pressure on Benetton
to permanently deactivate the tracking chip when they sell a garment.
If you return the garment, they can attach a new one.
Robert Fisk reports on how the war looks in Baghdad.
I'm glad to learn that the US is not bombing facilities such as the
water and electrical supply. Even if this is only for reasons of
calculation, it could spare millions of civilians much suffering.
Saddam Hussein being a dictator, and one who kills often, it would be
worth hundreds of lives--even innocent people's lives--to overthrow
him, if only we could be confident that the people of Iraq wanted to
be liberated (who knows?) and that the replacement would really be
much better. But anyone appointed by
Dubya is unlikely to be much
better. We can get a good idea of the sort of ruler that the US is
likely to impose by looking at the last ruler the US supported in
Iraq. His name: Saddam Hussein.
Beyond the issue of this war is the threat posed by unchecked US
power. Bush convinced Americans to support war against Iraq with a
series of repeated falsehoods claiming that Iraq was behind the 9/11
attacks. (All real evidence says Iraq had nothing to do with them.)
If he could do this once, why not again?
Is there any country the US could not create an excuse to attack?
What demands will the US seek to impose on a world through fear of US
attack? A simple look at Dubya's
business associates suggest they
will be designed to benefit the Enrons of the world.
Antiwar protests continue, as even Americans
resist the idea that they
should support war merely because there is one.
It's possible that the fighting against Saddam Hussein's forces will
be over quickly, but what happens afterward is another story. A
newspaper I saw today reported that an administration figure (perhaps
Rumsfeld but I don't remember) said things would go in Iraq after the
war would go as they have in Afghanistan.
Things in Afghanistan are not going well.
See also
Dubya's War Glossary.
We will surely hear calls to support the war in the name of
"supporting the troops". When leaders say this, they are hiding
behind their subordinates. But Bush can't hide from us this easily.
His campaign stole the election by
stopping tens of thousands of citizens of Florida from voting at all, and he should resign.
Meanwhile, one of the ways this war will hurt the US is through its
tremendous cost. Since the war is being fought for the sake of oil
companies, it seems to me that whoever succeeds Bush should make the
oil companies pay the full cost of the war.
Another cost to the US will be the tremendous antiamerican sentiment
around the world. In some sense the oil companies should bear that
cost, too--and people can make this happen. Imagine if everyone
around the world were to buy smaller cars, or electric cars, and
renewable electric plants, all because they hate the oil companies for
having their pet president start a war. Wouldn't that be great? If
you hate Bush, build a windmill. Eventually we may see Bush fighting
windmills like Don Quixote.
Advice for consumers on how to resist being influenced by advertising.
A warning to Brits (and Americans):
don't be drawn into blindly "supporting our troops". Intelligent, thoughtful support is not
blind.
Before Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer operator,
she wrote a series of emails to her family that explain the cruelties
that she hoped to prevent with her presence.
Police
arrested nonviolent antiwar protestors in San Francisco.
There is evidence that the city has appointed a special police
squad to investigate and arrest protestors.
Ethiopia faces famine again. The cause:
overpopulation.
Aid for Ethopia has to include birth control, or the population
will be limited by famine.
Witnesses say that Rachel Corrie was
deliberately killed by the driver of an Israeli bulldozer.
Normally when I cite someone else's writing, I reference his site
which shows who wrote it. I cannot do that here: if I publish the
name of the Serbian who sent me this letter, I would be putting him in
danger.
There are 318 prisoners in Serbia now. A number of them doesn't have relation
with murder of Djindjic, but the same persons are passing extreme torture. It
is very interesting that this information can be seen in Serbian
(http://www.b92.net/news/indexs.php?order=hrono&dd=16&mm=03&yyyy=2003) but
not in English at the main Serbian information agency, B92. Of course, even
in Serbian, there are no information about torture...
Through that time no one can publish anything about the present situation
which includes political proscription and police brutality. A lot of people
had experience with police torture, some of them with police brutality, and,
also, some of them with masked gendarmes (special police forces) in military
uniforms and military weapons.
In descriptive words: If I send this letter to media I'll be instantly
arrested!
Anarchist leader Ratibor Trivunac was arrested for writing that
Djindjic was "a criminal killed by other criminals", although he
clearly had nothing to do with the killing. He has been freed since.
Carlos Fuentes
presents arguments for Mexico to resist US pressure and
not support the US war resolution.
I don't think we know whether the Mexican government resisted.
A lawsuit threat from US Foodservice has
silenced a site where people had posted criticism of it.
If we want freedom of the press to cover criticism of a corporation,
we need laws that effectively protect web sites from harrassment
lawsuits.
CAPPS II, the
new system to collect and correlate many kinds of personal information about all airline passengers,
is running into
criticism in the Senate.
Israeli fighters
trying to destroy a Palestinian house killed an American woman
who was there trying to protect
the house from demolition.
Like Dubya,
Terry Jones (formerly of Monty Python) is
losing patience with his neighbors.
After Congressman Hansen criticized the IRS and other agencies, the US
government began a campaign to convict him of crimes that were
fabricated. He was eventually vindicated by the Supreme Court, after
spending years in prison and suffering torture that mutilated his feet and destroyed his teeth.
One torture method is carried out under the pretense of moving the
prisoner from one prison to another, strapped to a seat for hours in
the back of a truck. As soon as he arrives in the new prison, he is
moved again. Hansen was moved all around the country in this way.
Sometimes prisoners die from this.
I found this report almost incredible even given my distrust for the
US government, so I looked for additional references before posting
it. See this.
The persecution of Congressman Hansen took place across
decades, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
An economic system out of control--how global business concentration
drives the world
towards unsustainable practices.
Palestinians and Israelis are concerned that Sharon may use
the US attack on Iraq as
cover for even worse repression against Palestinians.
Israel's is making large numbers of Palestinians homeless, and seeks
to and cutting them off from all income. It seems the plan is to
make it impossible for Palestinians to live,
as a means of ethnic cleansing.
When Israeli fighters destroyed the house of a family of a dead
terrorist, they also destroyed the housing of 7 other families,
and killed the mother of one of them.
Many people will be especially horrified by the killing of a pregnant
woman. I disagree--in a world menaced by overpopulation, having
children is no virtue. Killing that pregnant woman was no worse than
killing you or me would have been.
Public libraries are starting to warn the public about how
the PAT-RIOT
authorizes the government to secretly spy on everyone.
Note that these provisions of the PAT-RIOT act are not limited to
bookstores and libraries. They apply to all business records,
including your credit card purchases and your telephone calls.
An article in the New York Times, about a year ago, revealed
that the FBI is collecting phone records for whole neighborhoods
as a block.
Even your past and present whereabouts are an open book to the FBI if
you carry a cell phone, since the system records its location at
all times whenever the phone has power (not just when you make a
call). I generally don't use my credit card for retail purchases, and
I refuse to carry a cell phone.
Why call it the PAT-RIOT act? The "PATRIOT" in the law's name is not
really a word; it is an acronym, the initials of seven other words.
Thus, splitting it is not really changing the name of the bill, just
clarifying its presentation.
See http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/
for more information
about how the PAT-RIOT act attacks your freedom.
Some studies report that growing certain GM crops is good for wildlife,
probably because of the reduction in pesticide use.
I don't agree with the people who think that genetically modified
crops are intrinsically wrong. I am suspicious of the global
businesses that develop them--suspicious that they will rush them into
use too fast for their safety to be assured, and suspicious that due
to patents or terminator technology these crops will hurt the social
conditions of farming.
A participant in drafting a new constitution for the EU
says it is developing into a threat to democracy.
The EU is already too remote from the public, too susceptible to
making directives that are imposed on a public that has no way to
resist or change them. If it is to be beneficial for the people
of Europe, it must become more democratic.
The DOD is trying again to get a
blanket exemption from environmental protection laws,
so it can pollute at will.
Israeli fighters with bulldozers
destroyed an apartment building
because Palestinian fighters had entered it to fire at the Israelis.
The Palestinians who lived in the building, who did not participate
in the fighting, are now homeless.
An analogous policy of punishing the people in the neighborhood where
an attack occurred was used by the Nazis in occupied countries.
Jimmy Carter
rejects the Bush regime's plans to attack Iraq.
Carter is no pacifist, and when Iranian religious fanatics took the US
embassy staff hostage, he sent US troops to rescue them. (The troops
messed it up.) His opposition to this war is thoughtful.
The Boy Scouts of America are
running into protests for expelling Atheists.
I believe I recall that the Girl Scouts do not have such a policy,
and neither do scouting organizations in Canada. This problem
is unique to the BSA.
Repression of dissent in the US: police start a fight with students at
a peaceful protest, a journalist records this, then the journalist
gets arrested.
Palestinians and Israelis expect Sharon to use the
expected US-Iraq war as the cover and excuse for massive crimes.
How Israeli troops
attacked a team of medics who were trying to aid a wounded man.
Such attacks are not unusual.
I reported on Susan Barclay's success in resisting first extralegal
deportation and then legal deportation from Israel.
Now she is being threatened with deportation again.
Look closely at the grounds that were reportedly offered for her
deportation: "taking part in violent demonstrations" (i.e. someone
else was violent, but Susan Barclay wasn't), and "gathering
information on the activities of Israeli officers to release to the
world" (i.e., reporting on war crimes). The first is otherwise known
as guilt by association, while the second is a matter of suppressing
information about injustice. For the sake of freedom in Israel, as
well as just treatment of the Palestinians for whom Barclay serves as
a witness, the Israeli judge should reject these charges as grounds
for deporting anyone.
Edward Said, who denounced Saddam Hussein back when Kuwait and the US
were supporting him,
demolishes Bush's supposed intention to bring democracy to Iraq--and
various other lies.
If you are blacklisted by the new US system for labeling air travelers
as a security risk, there will be no way you can try to clear your name,
no way to even confirm that you are on the list.
If our government officials were always fair and honest, and never
made a mistake, only real terrorists would be on the list. Then
perhaps it would be ok if there is no way to clear your name. But
have you ever heard of a government whose officials are always fair,
and never make mistakes?
Will Bush
hand Iraq over to a religious fanatic?
It might seem crazy, but the US has done it before. The fanatics of
the Taliban and Al Qa'ida were trained by the US before they became
our enemies.
The filtering programs that US law requires libraries to install
on their internet browser terminals "to block porn" actually
block a lot more than porn. For instance,
they make image searching nearly impossible.
Majority Senate Leader Frist has an Iraq war poll on his website.
Right now the majority of the respondents are pro-war. So spread
the word to go to his website and respond to the poll, and
change the percentages.
It's common for Israeli troops to kill Palestinians and say, when
confronted, "We were shooting at militants attacking us" or
"Palestinian fighters killed them."
Now a killing has been caught on video: an Israeli tank shot its gun
at a Palestinian fireman who was putting out a fire. The video shows
that no one near him was fighting the Israelis.
What is most interesting is to see that the Israeli army's excuses
bear no relation to reality. They are not just slightly wrong, they
are complete lies.
Meanwhile, the nonviolent international witnesses recently
prevented Israeli forces from destroying a medical clinic.
The US is
torturing prisoners in Afghanistan.
These are Al Qa'ida prisoners--or at least, suspected of being members
of Al Qa'ida. (Not all suspicions are true.) But other suspects are
brutalized in the US (Rodney King is perhaps the most famous). Soon
people suspected of wearing a peace shirt in a mall may be tortured
too.
A US citizen faces a year in prison for walking in a mall
wearing a shirt advocating peace.
It reminds me of the woman in Lhasa, Tibet, who was attacked last year
by Chinese police for wearing a shirt with the face of Phil Silvers
(the police thought it was the Dalai Lama). They did not arrest her,
they just took off her shirt, forcing her to go half-naked till she
could find something else to put on.
Thus, both the US and China forcibly suppress dissent--the Chinese
regime openly, while the US pretends to stand for freedom. The US
approach is clearly more brutal. Being forced to run through the
streets half-naked may feel humiliating, but being imprisoned for a
year is a much greater injury.
Assassinations, shadowing and death threats continue against union organizations in Colombia.
Sharon's plans for Palestine amount to taking the Palestinians' land
and imprisoning them in small Bantustans--or should we say, ghettos?
The US has already started the attack against Iraq, from the air.
Doing this without any fanfare suggests that Bush wants to slide into
war unnoticed--typical behavior for a government with something to
hide.
Meanwhile, Turkey's parliament refused to vote to allow the US to
attack Iraq from Turkish territory.
The 4 March Wall Street Journal has an editorial lecturing Turkey on
this "mistake". Why "mistake"? Because the US offered a lot of money
to buy Turkish support, and Turkey refused to be bought. A fall in
stock prices in Turkey supposedly proves the error of this decision.
The idea that business is more important than lives and ethics is not
stated explicitly, but rather taken for granted at every point. If
you're not for sale, kiddo, you're making a terrible mistake passing
up this one-time never-to-be-repeated offer.
Perhaps Turkey was less than enthusiastic about getting into an open
battle with the Iraqi Kurds, who say that they would fight any Turkish
forces that try to occupy their territory, as the
US suggested Turkey should do.
It might be a bit embarrassing to the US to go to war and see two of
its allies immediately begin to fight each other. But
Dubya and the
WSJ won't feel embarrassed--they will simply refuse to acknowledge the
problem.
Greg Palast reports on the leaked, secret FBI document that
told agents not to investigate the bin Laden family and
their connections with terrorism.
Israeli agents
tried to deport Susan Barclay, one of the international
volunteers to protect human rights in Palestine, disregarding the fact
that she had a court hearing coming up about whether she should be
deported.
Susan defied the agents, convinced the plane's crew to refuse to take
her, and eventually arrived at her hearing. The court decided not to
deport her. What's most interesting, though, is the lack of respect
that these agents have for their own court decisions.
Demolition of Palestinian housing is continuing at a high rate.
Sometimes Israeli soldiers destroy houses in which suicide bombers
live. This is collective punishment, in violation of treaties
to protect the population of occupied countries.
The Israeli soldiers
don't usually check who is in neighboring houses,
and often people are killed in them.
Sometimes houses are demolitshed because Israel says the houses were
built without permits. They were--because Israel almost never gives
Palestinians building permits. In effect, this is a
legalistic excuse to punish a whole people.
Is the US government
lying about the arrest of Al-Qa'ida "mastermind"
Khalid Sheikh Muhammad?
Ahmed Quddus was arrested in that raid, and his family says that
nobody was arrested with Ahmed. Perhaps Bush is keeping arrests
secret so he can announce them when he needs a PR boost.
I sure wish we had a government that we could trust to tell us
the truth about fighting terrorism. Kucinich in 2004?
A US bombing raid in Afghanistan
killed 17 civilians last month.
This is part of a pattern of low-intensity war against the Taliban.
In this war it is always the US and allies that kill the civilians,
and then tend to deny that it occurred. The consequences of this for
the US in Afghanistan
will not be good.
Meanwhile, depleted uranium in munitions ranging from anti-tank shells
to bunker-buster bombs is
suspected of causing the increase in birth defects
found in Afghanistan a year after the US invasion.
US troops are in danger from using DU munitions too. They are safe
to handle before they are fired, but once they explode and burn,
the uranium is dispersed into the air and the water and becomes
easy to ingest.
With this problem, even allies faced with outright enemy invasion will
have to think twice before asking the US to chase the invaders out.
If the price of liberating your country is birth defects and cancers
forever, is it worth paying?
John Kiesling resigned from the US diplomatic service to protest Bush
administration policies, saying that "Our fervent pursuit of war with
Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has
been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since
the days of Woodrow Wilson."
Police in Atlanta are always at the ready to protect businesses like
Taco Bell from the danger of...being criticized by leaflets.
Even if it take stretching the law to do it.
Policemen's attitude towards laws is like Humpty Dumpty:
"The law means what I say it means, no more, no less."
Venezuelan President Chavez has
arrested the leaders of the general strike
that lasted through December and January.
I do not support the strikers, who were generally the wealthiest
Venezuelans and wanted the country to return to the US-dominated "new
world order" and to policies that enrich them at the expense of the
many. The US is suspected of instigating a coup against Chavez a year
ago, and may well have instigated the general strike too.
But a strike is not a coup--it is a legitimate exercize of people's
freedom. Chavez does wrong arresting people for leading the general
strike. The strike failed; that should be enough.
Antiwar protestors were arrested in Minneapolis just
for handing out leaflets.
I don't know what the law actually says about this--but either the
police stretched the law and abused their power, or our society has
gone too far in cutting down the public space where citizens can
express their views. Either one is unacceptable.
Microsoft's
gift to the next Enron: software designed to save
documents so that only authorized people inside a corporation can read
them--and even they can't transmit the text to anyone else. Future
would-be whistleblowers will find that the whistle makes no sound.
Fanatics of various faiths, including Bush (Christian), Sharon
(Jewish) and the Taliban (Muslim), are spreading so much hate and
distrust that even groups that are dedicate to peace and understanding
feel the strain among their members.
The Algerian government has "disappeared" at least 7,000 people in its
civil war against Islamists. The Islamists were expected to win an
election, so
the government canceled the election.
The Islamists would probably have imposed Islamic law, which tramples
human rights (especially those of women, but also those of men).
However, the Algerian government's response has been no better.
Those disappeared in Algeria may have been murdered, or they may
still be alive in prison. There is no way to know. Those who
are disappeared in the US by the Bush administration are probably
still alive, but they may be kept in prison all their lives.
In one respect, the Bush regime proposes to go one better than the
Algerian regime. The Algerian regime won't give any information
about what happened to the disappeared people, but it doesn't
arrest Yassine Ourad for saying that his father was arrested.
Bush would make that a crime.
Bush proclaims that the US will make a "sustained commitment" to Iraq
and
turn it into a model democracy.
Looking at how the Bush regime operates in the US--not counting votes,
arresting people without trial--we have to wonder if a Bush-designed
Iraqi regime would be much of a democracy. But there's already
evidence that must lead us to disbelieve Bush's talk of a "sustained
commitment" for anything except oil. He has repeatedly spoken the
same way about Afghanistan, but his actions don't match. The US
is failing to help Afghanistan rebuild.
Oppressed people in other countries will see their hopes for
freedom dashed by the deals that Bush is making to
buy the support of various countries.
Religious extremists in the US used the cold war
as an excuse to get the US government to endorse religion explicitly--on
money, and in
the pledge of allegiance. Now Europe is considering the question
for its new constitution. Fortunately, the plan is running into
resistance.
Court secrecy orders are a growing menace in the UK.
This is part of a general trend for the government to operate in
secrecy, in the US, the UK, and around the world. We are familiar
with Bush's decision to resist all FOIA requests as much as possible.
Among the many attacks on freedom in the Bush administrations "Son of
PATRIOT" bill is a provision that would prohibit grand jury witnesses
from reporting what their testimony was. Even worse, if you find out
that someone has been imprisoned without charges, it would be a crime
for you to tell the public about it. People will be prohibited from
telling the public that their husbands or brothers have been
imprisoned without trial.
The UN found out in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its chemical and
biological weapons--but
kept the plans for producing them.
(It is virtually impossible to wipe out all copies of plans.)
For more details of what Hussein Kamel told the UN inspectors,
see this.
The contradictions of Israeli policy towards Palestinians
put them in a "Catch-2002".
This article also discusses the political developments among
the Palestinians that led to the present resistance.
Smoking marijuana can cause a kind of emphysema.
If you want to be as healthy as possible, you should avoid using
marijuana very often, for this and other reasons. But we must be
prepared to reject the double standard that prohibitionists will use
to misinterpret this report.
The article estimates that one unfiltered marijuana cigarette delivers
about four times as much tar as one tobacco cigarette. Heavy tobacco
smokers smoke 40 to 80 cigarettes per day, and a substantial fraction
of tobacco smokers use that much. To get an equivalent amount of tar
from marijuana, you would have to smoke 10 marijuana cigarettes per
day. Hardly anyone uses that much marijuana; in fact, one marijuana
cigarette per day is pretty heavy use.
One reason for this discrepancy is that tobacco is physically
addictive--withdrawal causes physical problems--while marijuana is
not.
Taken in context, this report reaffirms what we already knew: that
marijuana is safer than tobacco, and prohibition of marijuana is
irrational and destructive.
RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,
opposes an attack on Iraq.
RAWA previously opposed the Taliban, and before them the warlords,
and before them the Communists, because none of them respected
human rights for women (or for men).
When Palestinians randomly kill Israeli civilians, the Palestinians
are called terrorists. When the Israeli army randomly kills
Palestinians, it gives us to believe that the Palestinians are
terrorists (and that were killed fighting the Israeli army). Often
they
are actually civilians who were killed randomly while going
about their lives.
General Wiranto, former head of the Indonesian armed forces,
has been indicted by a UN war crimes tribunal. The Indonesian army and
associated paramilitary groups waged a bloody terror campaign to try
to prevent East Timor from becoming independent, and Wiranto was its
head at the time.
The Bush administration wants to resume US aid to the Indonesian
military, which continues using repressive measures in Aceh.
Jeb Bush wants to
close the State Library of Florida.
Looks like it runs in the Bush family to try to stop public from
getting information from the government.
HP's temporary workers are
suing HP for forcing them to work overtime
without pay. (Microsoft did the same thing and was sued.)
CNN's rules for slanting the news, and how they let the Israeli
government block news about Palestine.
The UK plans to cut carbon dioxide emission by 60%, and do it
without building nuclear reactors. The reduction will take 50 years.
Plan Colombia is supposed to be part of the "war on drugs",
which would be bad enough; but it's
actually worse.
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has
formed a new coalition that will
continue policies of aggression and repression towards Palestinians.
However, the Labor party refused to participate, and will now be able
to criticize the brutality of Sharon's policies.
When Sharon is no longer Prime Minister
he faces prosecution in Belgium for war crimes in Lebanon that the Israeli Army cooperated
with. Israel treats this Belgian decision with outrage, yet it
reflects Israel's own treatment of the perpetrators of mass murder.
An Indian woman who is a Canadian citizen was
attacked by crazed INS agents as she was returning from India to Canada via Kuwait and
Chicago. They did not let her speak to the Canadian Consulate before
destroying her passport and forcing her to go back to Kuwait.
She got off in Kuwait and got help from Canadian authorities,
who helped her return to Canada.
Even supposing there was some reason not to let this harmless woman
into the US--which I do not believe--the INS agents surely could have
let her go to her adopted home country right nearby. Their actions
bespeak the arrogance of power, the wish to seize an opportunity to
crush a handy helpless victim.
The ACLU and others have asked the Supreme Court to
limit government surveillance and overturn the decision of a secret surveillance court.
Some economists argue that
copyright and patents fail to promote the progress that they supposedly exist to promote.
This article takes a narrowly economic view of its subject, measuring
social alternatives only by what goods are available for what price,
assuming that you the citizen are a mere consumer and place no value
on your freedom in itself. It also uses the misleading term
"intellectual
property", which is misleading because it lumps copyrights and
patents together. The article also lumps them together, which it can
get away with because it ignores the (different) social issues that
copyrights and patents raise.
Despite those flaws, it is significant. If one can judge copyright to
be harmful even on narrow economic terms, disregarding the ethical
wrong of stopping people from sharing, it can only be more harmful
once we consider the ethics as well.
Parts of the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress are
starting to
withdraw support for a war with Iraq.
"The oceans, once mistakenly thought to be inexhaustible, clearly are
not." Scientists
call for banning of longline fishing, gillnetting
and bottom trawling, which are wiping out many species of fish, as
well as sea birds and sea turtles.
The world's fishing fleets are now so efficient and numerous
that operating them at full capacity is unsustainable.
Saddam Hussein is
presenting the Feb 15 anti-war protests as if they
were support for him and Iraq.
This is surely not what the protesters intended. I oppose attacking
Iraq under the present circumstances, but that isn't because I think
Saddam Hussein deserves to be the ruler. If there were a popular
resistance movement aiming to create a democracy, I would support it.
But we can hardly trust Bush to establish democracy or civil liberties
in Iraq when he does not respect them in his own country. For a picture
of what we could expect,
look
at Afghanistan,
where the problems are tremendous and the US is not providing much help.
Should Europe try to "catch up" with the US economically--is that
really a desirable goal?
Here's an article that starts by assuming that it is.
I've posted a link to it so I can point out why its basic
assumptions are wrong.
The article starts by assuming that the US has an "economic lead" over
Europe. In what sense is that true? Certainly not in the prosperity
of its citizens. The median income in the US has barely kept up with
inflation, and the poorest are poorer now than in 1980. Certainly not
in the quality of life of its citizens--we have to work more hours
than we did then, almost an entire month per year more than in 1970.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans can't afford to see a doctor
if they get sick.
If the US has a "lead" in any sense, it could only be in transferring
wealth from the general public to the rich. The US has been doing
that very effectively, ever since Reagan promised us a "trickle-down"
that never occurred.
Anyone who wants his country to follow the US "lead" is trying to lead
his country to disaster. So when the article concludes by proposing
that Europe should solve its demographic problem by competing with the
US to enrich the few whose skills are most in demand, I have to think
that he started from this conclusion and sought an opportunity to
justify it. He argues that there is no choice, but there is a choice.
Instead of trying to outdo the US in harshness, Europe could begin
speaking directly to Americans about how harsh and self-destructive
our system is--both for us and for the rest of the world. Then maybe
the US and Europe could compete to make their economic systems better
for people generally.
Did Enron make the US
vulnerable to terrorism?
The Sep 11 highjackers were not working for Enron, but apparently it
was Enron's ties with both the Taliban and the Bush administration
that opened the way for them.
Whistleblower John Loftus reports that Vice President Cheney, trying
to protect sensitive negotiations between Enron and the Taliban, told
the FBI not to allow investigation of people connected with the
Taliban--including, for instance, the Al Qa'ida terrorists that were
planning the September 11 attacks.
The Bush administration now proposes to "protect" Americans from
terrorism with a further attack on our freedom. They want to cancel
US citizenship of for people who are suspected of association with
terrorism--even through participation in protests.
http://writ.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20030217.html,
You could argue that the executives of Enron, by asking Cheney to
block investigation of terrorist threats, were aiding terrorism and
deserve some sort of punishment. Perhaps Cheney deserves punishment
too for complying with their request. But canceling their US
citizenship goes much too far. No one's citizenship should ever be
canceled because of crimes, even the most serious of crimes.
Of course, we know that this law would not be used against those in
high places who have really aided terrorism. It would be used to
threaten people who oppose them. Perhaps they will choose a protest
that Representative Kucinich participated in, label one of its
sponsors as a terrorist organization, cancel his citizenship, and stop
him from running for president.
If Bush and Cheney were serious about protecting us from terrorism,
they could do it best by resigning from office. Then they would no
longer pose a risk to our security or a threat to our freedom.
The Spanish government
closed a Basque newspaper
[*],
arresting its editor.
Supposedly the newspaper is accused of "alerting ETA to police raids."
How did they do that, I wonder? By publishing articles?
Peter Tatchell will
try to rescue Zimbabwe from dictatorship by
arresting its dictator.
I had not heard of Peter Tatchell before this article, but from what I
can see there, I admire his views.
Bush is
following the advice of Nazi Hermann Goering in whipping
up Americans to want war.
A court in France
found Yahoo innocent of charges of promoting Nazism.
It had links to sites selling Nazi memorabilia.
I don't like Nazism one bit, but it is important not to
restrict public expression of political views.
The UK has been designing cruel policies towards people seeking
asylum, in order to discourage them from coming.
The UK High Court
ruled that these policies violate the European
Convention on Human Rights.
The prologue of Bertrand Russell's autobiography describes
his priorities in life. I recommend paying attention.
When people say what goals their work is intended to serve,
it is instructive to compare those stated goals with
Bertrand Russell's goals.
Fashion designers and arms dealers:
both merchants of death.
I've always looked at designer logos on clothing as a mark of
stupidity--evidence that someone was foolish enough to be led by the
nose by fashion and snobbery. If enough of us express this opinion,
we can weaken the influence of fashion manipulation.
Representative Kucinich is
seeking the Democratic nomination for
president.
He criticizes the USA PAT-RIOT Act for its attacks on civil liberties.
Maybe I will support him, after I learn more about him.
UK Prime Minister Blair has shown total contempt for the British
people by forcing them into a war that they oppose. Since a million
protestors in London had no effect on him, now Britons
plan a civil disobedience campaign to oppose British participation in the war.
I suppose the
peace rallies of Feb 15 are not news to anyone
reading this site, but I think I can't let them go unmentioned.
Compare these two Colin Powell quotes:
"We cannot let Usama bin Laden pretend that he is doing it in the name
of helping the Iraqi people or the Palestinian people. He doesn't care
one whit about them. He has not given a dollar toward them. He has
never spoken out for them.
February 11, 2003 Powell testified before the Senate Budget Committee
and said, "Once again he [bin Laden] speaks to the people of Iraq and
talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with
Iraq. This nexus between terrorists and states that are developing
weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and
ignored."
The quote is about
halfway down; search for the word "nexus" to find it.
See this
for more analysis.
It has been pointed out that these two quotations are not precisely
opposites. You can make them fit, if you assume that Saddam Hussein
helps Osama bin Laden but Osama bin Laden never helps Saddam Hussein.
However, it would not be like Saddam Hussein to do that.
Bolivians are
rising up against a government
that represents the US and corporations, not them.
Rabbi Michael Lerner was
barred from speaking at an anti-war rally by
an antisemitic cosponsor of the rally.
Lerner, who describes himself as "pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian",
urges people to participate in the anti-war rally nonetheless
A new Iraq war would be
very dangerous to children in Iraq.
Since over half the Iraqi population are children, that means
Iraq is having a very high birth rate. I wonder how this compares
with its birth rate before the Gulf war, and I wonder whether it is
partly because birth control is not available there--or else why.
The UK is considering a
mandatory surveillance and tracking system for
all private cars. It would record the location of every car in the
country--while it is driving, at least.
Of course, the excuse for this Orwellian measure is just to collect
a tax and reduce congestion. But that is silly--the gas tax does
approximately the same job, including charging more per mile in
central London and in rush hour, since cars burn a lot more gas per
mile. As so often happens, some minor goal serves as the excuse for
the government to attack your freedom.
They say there will be "strict controls" to protect your privacy.
But not from the police if they think you are a dissident.
The advocates of this plan say it is impossible to build
enough train and bus capacity to solve the problem. But if they
don't want people to drive, they had better provide some other
transportation method.
Dubya's
repeated claims that Iraq is connected with Al Qa'ida have
brainwashed most Americans into thinking that the Sep 11 attacks were
committed by Iraqis.
It is sad to admit that lies are stronger than the truth.
An American nurse who was arrested in Indonesia for volunteering to
give medical care to Acehnese
has now been freed.
Reservists in the UK, where people are strongly opposed to war
with Iraq, are
refusing call-up in large numbers.
Bush is planning
a law that makes the PAT-RIOT act even worse. Part
of the plan is to cancel the US citizenship of citizens who
participate in organizations that the government calls "terrorist".
The government can label a group as "terrorist" just by saying so.
Therefore, this adds up to the ability to cancel your citizenship at
any time--provided you belong to a group. They might even be able
to invent the group.
But even if they had to make a case to prove that a group is
terrorist, canceling the citizenship of anyone is still an outrage.
The bill would also legalize the government's secrecy about people who
have been secretly arrested; that is, disappeared.
A British intelligence report, made just a few weeks ago,
reported no links between Iraq and Al Qa'ida.
Andy Higginbottom, whose reports about murder of union leaders in
Colombia have sometimes been linked to here, is
now receiving death threats himself.
Hundreds of former members of revolutionary guerilla armies, which
made peace with the government several years ago and turned to
political action, have also been murdered in Colombia, and it looks
like things are going to get even worse.
The Israelis began "attacking terrorists" in Hebron
by destroying the vegetable market, giving the merchants no chance to rescue either
their stalls or the vegetables.
They are also destroying houses by the dozen, ostensibly because they
were "built without permission"; but since Palestinians can never get
permission to build, this legal excuse is a dishonest Kafkaesque
facade for removing people who are "in the way".
Iraqis may hate Saddam, but a US conquest of Iraq
will not strengthen those in the middle east who want democracy.
James Watson
proposes the frightening policy of taking the DNA fingerprint of everyone--and
trusting the government to control access
to the information.
Our governments say that they try to protect us and serve our
interests. Perhaps Dr. Watson believes this is true. If we had
democratic governments that listened to the concerns of citizens who
are not rich, if the police were honest and did not bend and break the
law to attack dissidents, perhaps his proposal would be a good idea.
Robert Fisk is
skeptical about the evidence regarding Iraq.
The Australian Senate
voted to condemn the Australian government's
preparations to participate in a war against Iraq.
Song:
We are Americans.
Israeli soldiers
destroyed a Palestinian home, killing an elderly
woman who was still inside it.
Israeli forces have a systematic practice of demolishing Palestinian
homes. This only occasionally turns into murder, but it is always a
form of collective punishment (i.e. punishment of the innocent),
violating international treaties about how to treat people in occupied
territory.
A Colonel who talked too much & Gush Shalom
Confronting the Empire, a statement by Arundhati Roy
The hero of "West Wing", derided by Conservatives, has a foreign
policy so right-wing that a British columnist
finds it frightening.
The European Parliament is
investigating accusations that the
EU funds for the Palestinian Authority are being diverted
into terrorism. Others dispute these charges. The Parliament
may set up an investigating committee.
Texas executed Jackie Elliott, who was
convicted 16 years ago on the testimony of police informers.
New evidence, including evidence that
the police ignored other suspects, was rapidly being found. The
judge, faced with the danger that evidence would show that the state
was wrong, decided to press ahead with the execution so and forestall
the danger.
The article
mentions additional evidence that Elliott wasn't the murderer. It
also points out that the judge had made statements to the media
showing prejudice against Elliott. Isn't this exactly what the first
judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial was reprimanded for?
Apparently Microsoft's money is held to deserve greater respect from
the legal system than a man's life.
While the US prepares to attack Iraq, pretending that Al Qa'ida is
there, the real Al Qa'ida is having
a resurgence in Afghanistan.
It is not just fighting Americans, but women also.
Maybe Bush should fight Al Qa'ida where it is, instead of where it
ain't.
Greek police are harrassing an Anarchist for various crimes
in Italy that she was
already exonerated for.
For 20 years, globalization has replaced well-paid US jobs with
low-paid foreign jobs; but some good jobs could not be moved.
Digital technology is changing that.
Soon the only jobs left in the US will be those that require physical
proximity to clients in the US--a few doctors and teachers, and a lot
of McJobs. These will remain in the US as long as the US has a customer
base for them. But falling wages will eat into that customer base.
When the US going down meets India coming up, the result will be
more like India today than like the US today.
Adversarial wealth and synergic wealth.
Be on the lookout for trumped-up excuses for invading Iraq;
it won't be the first time.
The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday, Feb. 4, on the nomination of
Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has
traditionally been a gateway to a Supreme Court appointment.
Email your Senators TODAY to oppose this nominee, AND call your
Senators at 202-224-3121 to urge them to block the confirmation of
Miguel Estrada.
Public libraries in the US are carefully deleting information
about what books you read and where you surf on the internet, to
protect your privacy from a marauding Federal government.
The UN estimates that
half a million Iraqi civilians will need medical care because of a war.
And it will be hard for them to get any care
in Iraq at war.
Part of the reason would be that the US plans to attack facilities
such as electrical supply. In a war like this one, attacking the
power supply would not be a military necessity. Command facilities
surely have their own generators, and neither tanks nor snipers need
electricity to fight. This would be a measure aimed at the civilian
population.
Bush's polarization of Europe on the issue of Iraq
joins many other harmful consequences of his relentless
push for war.
The Iranian religious leaders have
released a famous dissident religious leader from arrest.
5000 children die each month in Iraq
because the UN sanctions committee does not allow Iraq to buy medicine (though the US pretends
Iraq can buy all it wants).
Some of the sicknesses are caused by the radioactive uranium released
by exploding US shells that were filled with uranium 238. These
"depleted uranium" shells were developed because the density of the
uranium is effective for penetrating armor, not with the intention of
poisoning the surrounding countryside. But the poisoning does occur,
and now that it is clear to see, we must not use these shells again,
not even when war is justified.
Another type of armor-piercing shell might be a little less effective,
but the world's strongest army could make do with it. And if the US
sets an example of renouncing these shells, perhaps other countries
would do likewise.
Kevin Annett faces arrest in Canada for speaking out about murder,
forced sterilization, land expropriation, and even Tuskegee-style
medical experiments without consent, all carried out on Native
Americans by the Canadian government together with major churches.
To silence Annett, a judge convicted him of defamation merely for
quoting the sworn testimony of witnesses in court. The court
did not bother to send Annett a summons to notify him that there
was a lawsuit against him. The whole proceedings should be invalid,
but Annett nonetheless faces arrest.
The Labor party in the UK threatens to deny firefighters
the right to strike,
unless they voluntarily don't use it.
The Labor Party pretends to defend the rights of labor, and still gets
much of its support from unions. Let's hope they wise up and stop.
A British mother who was convicted of murdering her two babies was
exonerated after evidence showed that the natural death of both babies was not, after all, so terribly unlikely.
What is significant here is that the pathologist failed to pass along
vital information that would have exonerated her to start with. This
systematic flaw in the system will no doubt produce other miscarriages
of justice, and not all of them will be corrected. Accidents will
happen with any system, but when they result from a systematic flaw,
they are not really accidents.
Greenpeace Southeast Asia is
switching to the free software GNU/Linux operating system.
They recognize that this is a way to uphold
freedom, as well as a way to save money.
GNU/Linux is a variant of the GNU
operating system, in which Linux is used as one component.
According to Human Rights Watch, the state government of Gujarat,
India
actively encouraged the 2002 massacres of Muslims in that state.
Bush is stacking the government's science advisory committees with
people that
will support his political agenda or help business.
This is a continuation of his policies toward various international
bodies, described in
previous
notes.
Natural forces of freezing and thawing
move stones into complex and patterns of many kinds.
Some people had assumed these must have been
made deliberately by conscious beings.
If you think that "I don't see how it could have happened naturally"
is sufficient basis to conclude that "It must not be natural", your
own occasional ignorance (we are all ignorant of some things) will
systematically lead you to posit supernatural causes for natural
events. Recognizing this, you should reject that inference. It's
usually more plausible that we are ignorant of some natural phenomenon
than that anything supernatural exists.
A
campaign for freedom of the press opposes a ruling in
part of Germany that requires all ISPs to block access
to certain "hate speech" web sites.
Admiration, and
some critical suggestions, for the anti-globalization movement.
Two anarchist prisoners in the US are being
punished harshly just for receiving moral support mail from anarchists.
Bulgarian workers brought into Israel are
treated almost like slaves. "They kick the workers in the head until they bleed".
Municipally owned cable systems are
serving the public much better than privately owned cable.
It is no surprise that public ownership is better, since it is
rare that customers for privately owned cable systems have
any competition to choose from.
The UN weapons inspectors
reported that Iraq is not fully cooperating
with them (although it has let them look wherever they wish to look).
The report gives some credibility to the claim that Iraq is hiding
biological and chemical weapons, but does not prove it. The US
government now says it will release its secret evidence to prove this.
However, Bush and Blair have told us several times that they were
about to show real proof--and after a long drumroll, they showed us
inconclusive information that we already knew.
The US is considering a war strategy that
ought to terrify every American.
Children in India's silk factories work,
in effect, as slaves.
There are signs that the US plans to attack Iraq
in just a week.
You don't have to commit, aid, or even intend any sort of harm to
others in order to be guilty of "terrorism" in the UK. Mere suspicion
legally counts as guilt.
Section 57 of the UK Terrorism Act says, "A person commits an offence
if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a
reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected
with the commission, preparation, or instigation of an act of
terrorism."
The act proceeds to say that if you can "prove" that the article was
"not for a purposes connected...with terrorism", that is considered a
defense. But how would you prove the absence of a certain purpose in
your mind? That is impossible; even if you didn't entertain
a particular purpose, you conceivably might have done so.
Trying to use this defense would be sheerest Kafka.
Of course, if you are convicted of the crime of having been suspected,
the government spokespeople (and much of the press) will talk about
you asserting that you really were planning an act of violence. This
subsequent explicit lie will serve to justify the implicit lie
embodied in the law itself.
What this shows is that a system of laws can be a fancy dressing for
arbitrary rule. UK citizens should stop being distracted by the
occasional terrorist and direct their attention to putting a check on
the lawlessness of government.
An organization of US veterans
asks US soldiers not to fight in Iraq.
The US is starting to
wake from the trance
that Bush put on it after 9/11.
The Independent reports that Bush has decided to call the whole
process of weapons inspections in Iraq
a failure -- perhaps because
the inspectors have not found the weapons that the US wants us to believe
are there.
It is clear that either the inspectors are unable to verify the facts,
or the US is lying. In principle, either one could be true. But if
the US has really told them where to find the weapons, how could they
fail?
Bush says that any Iraqi officers that ordered the use of "weapons of
mass destruction" against US troops would be tried as war criminals.
The US always said it was ready to use weapons of mass destruction
against the Soviet army if it invaded Europe. This looks like a
double standard to me.
What militant Islam looks like to
someone who saw it from the inside.
Israeli soldiers
destroyed the market next to the Palestinian town of Nazlat Issa,
saying the market was built without building permits.
(It is essentially impossible for Palestinians to get building permits
from Israel.)
The villagers built the new market because Israelis set up a
checkpoint that prevents people from going to the old market inside
the village.
Tony Blair, while insisting that the UK (and presumably the US)
will attack Iraq with or without UN support, admits that there is
no link between Iraq and Al Qa'ida.
In effect, this admits that Bush was lying all the time when he
claimed they were connected.
The son of a former head of state asks for your help, and your money, to
secure control of oil assets that are under the control of a hostile regime. Sound familiar?
Opposition MPs are
being tortured in Zimbabwe.
Neoclassical economics teaches that people are completely selfish and
models the "rational" consequences of such selfishness--usually
assuming additionally that people make decisions based on full
knowledge of their options. Both assumptions are absurd.
Heterodox economists who question these assumptions are
under attack at many universities.
The absurdity of neoclassical economics is widely taught as truth; why
is that? I think because it is convenient for companies and their
owners, that are acting selfishly and seek to avoid criticism for it,
and for governments that suck up to them, such as by cutting taxes for
the rich while cutting and privatizing services for the poor.
Note also how department chair Jensen speaks of "industry standards"
for economics departments, in effect referring to universities as an
"industry". It's no surprise that many of university administrators
see things that way, but any university that considers its activities
primarily in that light has lost sight of its proper mission and ought
to lose its tax exemption next.
The United States of America Has Gone Mad, by John le Carre
What does the US establishment
hope to gain from the FTAA
(Free Trade Area of the Americans), also known as ALCA?
Two Chinese labor leaders were convicted of "subverting state power"
for
leading workers to demand back wages owed to them.
This is what the US government closes its eyes to by encouraging
trade with China.
Representative Kucinich gave a
memorable speech when he was
sworn in for his current term in Congress.
Yoni Ben-Artzi, a consciencious objector in Israel, is being
imprisoned indefinetely without trial, and needs people's support.
An amateur photographer in Denver
was arrested for taking photos
of the hotel where Vice President Cheney was staying. When he tried
to use his one phone call to talk to the press, he was cut off.
The police said he would not get his camera back, and did not even
give him a receipt for it. They say they are holding it as
"evidence". This is a transparent excuse to punish him with
confiscation of his property. It indicates the cavalier attitude that
the police adopt towards the law: it is an excuse for power, not a
limitation on what they can do.
We see that Cheney (and Bush) hurt Americans not only through their
decisions, but also by randomly crushing people as they move through
our neighborhoods.
Berlusconi, il ducino, is
threatening the magistrates who have
prosecuted corruption in Italy.
There are many accusations that Berlusconi is corrupt and that he
cooperates with the Mafia. (His party has all the parliamentary seats
in Sicily.)
The conflict between the Bolivian government and coca growers is
heating up. US government pressure is the reason why the
Bolivian government is so intransigent on this issue.
Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians
seriously tried
to carry out the Oslo peace process.
When people go to the UK seeking political asylum, the system often
treats them so badly that they must become prostitutes, and may be
homeless. But now that one asylum seeker was connected with
terrorism, there is pressure to
make
the system even more cruel,
for all of them.
In the 1960s, the last time Brazil had a leftist president, the CIA
engineered a coup. A murderous military government took over the
country. A group of Brazilians including Fernando Gabeira kidnaped
the US ambassador in order to get other dissidents released from
prison.
Today Brazil is a democracy again, and Fernando Gabeira is a member of
the Brazilian congress. But he was
not allowed into the US to attend
the 1998 opening of a film of his book about those events. The US
still considers him a terrorist. Will the CIA terrorists who
overthrew democracy in Brazil ever be punished?
Gabeira is still in the Brazilian congress as of January 2003.
1300 men have been arrested in the UK for downloading "child
pornography" on the Internet. "Child pornography" was once the excuse
of choice for increased surveillance and censorship of the Internet,
before terrorism came conveniently to hand.
The arrested men are described as "suspected paedophiles", a cleverly
ambiguous term. Just what are they suspected of? Is it that they do
or did something with real children? If so, the downloaded pictures
are not evidence of it. Or is it only that they might feel an
attraction to children? If so, then they stand accused of nothing but
a mental inclination: thoughtcrime. The term conceals either one
injustice or another, and thus obscures them both.
When pressed, the authorities will say these men are to be punished
for possession of forbidden pictures, not for anything else. But if
that were sincere, why make ambiguous accusations of something else?
The prohibition of these pictures is really an excuse to lock people
up who are condemned for their thoughts.
There are more serious crimes than sex with children--murder, for
example. Perhaps people who have thought about murder should be
imprisoned too. With the help of the USA PAT-RIOT Act, the police
could examine bookstore records and arrest everyone who has bought a
mystery novel, on the grounds that he or she might have an inclination
to murder someone someday.
I'm glad I always pay cash for books.
The India-Pakistan arms race
perpetuates poverty.
Vietnamese who posted criticism of the government on the Internet
have been
sentenced to long prison terms.
The harsh attitude towards men who are attracted to children,
manifested in the systematic attempts to arrest people for merely
looking at pictures, could be perversely making it
more likely they
will try to have sex with children.
It won't be the first time that a harsh government approach to a social
problem backfires and makes the problem worse.
Polar bears are
headed for extinction in about a century, because of
global warming. Although few of us will live to see it happen
(barring great advances in medicine), preventing the extinction will
have to be done now.
Law professor Francis Boyle argues that Bush
should be impeached, that
his plan to go to war against Iraq merely because it might develop
weapons violates the principles established at the Nuremberg war
crimes trials.
Thousands of people are
stating their opposition to Blair's
proposal for a national ID card in the UK.
In a UK-sponsored conference on planning for a Palestinian state, the
Palestinian delegates are participating by video conference, since
Israel would
not let them travel.
It occurs to me that part of the reason why this conference is
occurring is that Blair hopes it will divert Arab hostility in the
case of war with Iraq.
Blair says the US and UK may
attack Iraq without UN support. As he
and Bush have done several times before, he says that there will be evidence
that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but does not show us any.
Football, American style, amazingly could
provide a paradigm for
fairness among Americans for whom caring about fairness seems absurd.
The US empire and the British empire: are they
to be admired?
Dubya
insists that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and dismisses
the contrary reports of UN weapons inspectors as insignificant.
Meanwhile, the US has been
slow to
help the inspectors find the
supposed weapons.
Beer companies
buy the support of the Congressional Black Caucus.
(Lots of other companies buy the support of other parts of
congress.)
Anti-war train operators in the UK have
refused to drive trains carrying arms to be sent to Iraq.
The prejudice against prostitutes allows people to
murder them with impunity, as long as it's done one by one.
This article was written in the UK, but the attitude is basically the
same in the US.
As the US prattles about Iraq's possible "weapons of mass
destruction,
mass murder is happening
in the Congo. Thousands of
machetes are sufficient weapons of mass destruction there.
I don't know enough about the situation to try to suggest how the
slaughter could be stopped, but I am pretty sure the US could do it
if it were willing to spend 1/10 what it plans to spend in Iraq.
A US government agency has a list of around 1000 americans who are not
allowed to fly. Supposedly they are on the list because they are
potential terrorists, but the list includes political dissidents who
believe in complete nonviolence as a matter of conscience.
They don't give you a trial before putting you on the list,
they won't necessarily confirm that you are on the list,
and there is nothing you can do to get off the list.
It's pure Kafka--or should I say,
pure Dubya.
One of the people who was blocked from flying is a Green party leader.
He was shown a government document labeling the Green party as a
terrorist threat. I have supported several Green Party candidates
recently. I wonder if they will put me on the list.
The Israeli army is steadily destroying certain areas of Rafah in the
southern Gaza Strip. They attack in a regular pattern, so the people
who live in the next homes to be destroyed flee in advance. As a
result, they are not generally being killed. That doesn't make it
acceptable to
deliberately destroy whole neighborhoods.
(You have to read a fair ways through the page to come to this
material.)
Global warming is causing species to move their territories
northward at
three miles a year.
But not all species can move--they can run into mountains, rivers,
valleys, deserts, oceans, and various other changes in terrain that
they can't cope with. The result: extinction for some species,
which can have repercussions for others.
There are tree species whose fruit evolved to be eaten by animals now
extinct for thousands of years. For some, the result is that the
trees cannot spread from the areas they now live in. For some, there
are no new seedlings, only a decreasing number of old trees.
The 10 worst corporations of 2002 (only two of them are on the list
for financial deceit).
Angie Zeltzer photographed an Israeli settler attacking a Palestinian,
and then was attacked in turn. The settler is now on trial, and Zeltzer
is there to testify--but the government is
trying to stop her testimony by deporting her.
It appears that no principle of justice or democracy is safe in Israel
under the current government.
More recent reports say that the settler was given a plea bargain and
the Israeli Supreme Court approved Zeltzer's deportation as a
"security threat". What kind of government declares someone a
"security threat" for trying to document a crime?
Is it legitimate for police to pick through your trash without a
warrant? A team of journalists gave the officials who advocate this a
taste of their own medicine.
In the era of the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act, whether police can paw
through your trash may seem trivial, but I think that fighting for any
aspect of the rights of citizens will strengthen our resolve to defend
all our rights from those who are trying too officiously to protect
us. I think that people in general should be free to pick through the
trash looking for useful things to use. But it could make sense to
have more restrictive rules for the police.
If You're Happy And You Know It,
Bomb Iraq.
I won't draw any specific conclusion from
this article about how
North Korea sees its situation vis-a-vis the US.
Activists of OCAP are going on trial for being among the
victims of a police riot that attacked their protest rally.
When Ashcroft was a senator, he
criticized the Clinton administration's plans to increase surveillance. The criticism was
justified--but that same Ashcroft is now presiding over a much greater
assault on our freedom.
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