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Here's a site that argues that the most important acts of terror and
war against the US for the last 6 decades were all
fake.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
According to what I've read, some of these charges are justified but some are not.
The fraudulence of the supposed Gulf of Tonkin attack is well established.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not fake. It was indeed a response to the US trade embargoes, but it was not a compelled response: Japan also had the option of ceasing its aggression in China. The Japanese leaders chose to start a war with the US rather than to stop their expansion. A side point: Germany declared war on the US first, not the other way around. It might have been hard for Roosevelt to get a declaration of war against Germany if Germany had not already made one.
The Iraqi attack on Kuwait was real, and even if a story about stealing incubators and dying babies was falsified, the truth was bad enough. However, the US encouraged the attack by having its ambassador telling Hussein that it would not object if Iraq conquered Kuwait. This made the US government partially responsible for the attack.
I have never before seen the accusation that the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by the government, and at first sight it seems implausible. McVeigh's lawyers would have pounced on any evidence that the bombing was done in some other way.
The Sudanese government has arrested refugees who testified about the
murderous activities of government-supported militias.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
US media will broadcast lies about Kerry's war record, but the truth about Bush's national guard record (and blackmail record) is too controversial for them.
Settlement Growth: Bad for America, Worse for Israel
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US media are trying to marginalize protests against the Republican
Convention, just as they failed to show the
opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
It's Peace [in Najaf] but the Dead are Everywhere.
US-sponsored torture,
from El Salvador to Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Gandhi's grandson led a rally of 2000 Palestinians and Israelis
against the annexation wall.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Air fresheners, carpets, heater fumes, air conditioning all increase asthma.
Unarmed marchers on a peace mission to Najaf, under the direction of
Ayatollah Sistani,
were fired at with mortars, then with guns. It is
not certain who fired the mortars, but the gunfire came from the Bush
forces.
[References updated on 2018-05-06 because the old links were broken.]
Police in Florida are trying to scare Blacks
into not voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This is part of a
widespread pattern of trying to stop
Blacks from voting in many states.
[References updated on 2018-05-06 because the old links were broken.]
When Blacks do vote, their votes are especially likely to be called "spoiled" and not counted.
The Indonesian army is in a quagmire
fighting against the decades-long insurgency in Aceh.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The rebels in Aceh are Muslim extremists, and I don't think I would want to live under the government they would establish. But there is no use trying to impose a non-Islamic government on them by force when most of the Acehnese wouldn't support it.
The reason Dubya's men restrict and arrest protestors is simply out of
concern they might be injured... by Dubya's
men.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Defend the Homeland!-- Support All
Suspicious Activity
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush administration continues to try to authorize
torture, by redefining the meaning of the word "torture" that the
law forbids.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
People ridiculed Clinton for splitting hairs about the meanings of "sex" and "is". Splitting hairs about the meaning of "torture" is deadly serious.
Environmental changes have caused a great increase in many kinds of brain diseases.
This article is about the UK, but I'd expect it is the same elsewhere.
A US army investigation has inculpated commanders at Abu Ghraib for torture there.
Knowing what we know about the explicit Bush decisions to authorize torture, it would be an injustice to let the buck stop there.
The Guantanamo kangaroo courts have begun--accepting evidence
obtained by torture. So they could torture you into confessing to
a murder, then fry you for it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
If Bush is ever put on trial for these crimes, I hope he gets a fair trial. I would not support anything less. It would be turnabout for Bush to be tortured into confessing having connived at the murder of thousands of New Yorkers (regardless of whether he really did this, he might confess it under torture); but by doing so we would demean ourselves, and set a bad precedent that might later endanger the rights of others. Rather than giving vent to feelings of anger by torturing Bush, we should set a higher moral standard for ourselves, and be proud of having decided not to torture him.
Nonviolent protestors against the annexation wall confronted Israeli soldiers who had detained Palestinian youths for hours for no particular reason. One of the protestors was dragged away, imprisoned, and beaten by the police.
A UK member of parliament plans to move the impeachment of Tony Blair on charges of deliberately misleading the public and parliament.
"There is more than one way not to tell the truth: half-truths, omissions and deliberate ambiguities can be just as effective as crude lies if the mission is to mislead." Well said!
Criticizing the
usual story of why the US developed and used nuclear weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree with one aspect of the author's point of view. The Soviet Union was a bloody dictatorship, and at the end of World War II it had a large army and a penchant for conquest. Even despite US nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union took over and occupied eastern Europe for 45 years. Such a threat justifies strong countermeasures, and I will not criticize people for thinking to develop super weapons as a way to hold the Soviet armies in check.
The use of nuclear weapons on cities in Japan is a separate question.
The US government has escalated the War on Copying by
raiding people who were sharing songs and movies over the
Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This is an example of the result of having a government dominated by large corporations. It serves them, not the public.
Meanwhile, the music factories have sued almost 1000 individuals for sharing music.
Friendship is sharing. Anyone who tells you it is wrong to share is the enemy of you and all the friends you might share with.
Arundhati Roy: TIDE? OR IVORY SNOW? Public Power in the Age of Empire
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US National Academy of Engineering sent its members an email criticizing the US goverment for interfering with scientific cooperation by making it hard for scientists to get visas to visit the US. It talked about efforts to convince US consular officials to change their policies, and how hard it will be to convince foreign scientists that the US is an "open and welcoming country".
I sent back this message:
The US is not an open and welcoming country. For instance, if these
scientists do visit the US, they will be fingerprinted like criminals.
There is also the danger that they will be arrested, as Dmitri
Sklyarov was (see www.eff.org)--or shipped summarily to Syria or Egypt
to be tortured. (For more information on one known case,
see.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Rather than trying to convince our colleagues that it is good to visit the US, we should recommend that they uphold their dignity and safety by staying away. I would stay away from the US if I were them. International scientific conferences should be held outside the US, in countries that are open and welcoming.
Marin County is considering a resolution opposing dirty uranium weapons. More on the background of Leuren Moret.
One caveat about that article is that "atomicity" is not a meaningful
way to measure radioactivity.
This article explains that point
and many other useful points about dirty uranium bombs.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A study of Al Qa'ida reports that it is decentralized--more a social movement than a unified organization. Its strength, while not zero, is overestimated by governments that are manipulating public fears.
The official 9/11 investigation says that the
FBI failed to do its
best in stopping the funding for 9/11.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Direct
intervention by the Bush administration played a role in this
failure.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US is supporting expansions of Israeli settlements in Palestine.
The Arctic ice cap is breaking up--for the first time in human history, but surely not the last.
At last the Democrats criticize one thing Bush has done: cut
overtime pay for many Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
If they start criticizing 20 more, I will start to say they aren't gutless.
The US military
blocked a UN human rights investigator from visiting prisons in
Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Driving land cruisers in the desert has caused a tremendous
increase in dust storms, world wide.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
John Kerry: the Warchurian
Candidate
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
OCAP is fighting against campaigns in Toronto to sweep away
homeless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
In little over one year, almost half the soldiers in one unit in the
Bush forces
have developed cancer--almost certainly due to the dirty uranium
bombs that were used in large quantities.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Over half the troops that participated in the first Gulf War in 1991 are now on permanent disability. This could also be due to dirty uranium bombs. They were used then in smaller quantities, so troops got a smaller dose and would not get sick as fast.
Many of Iraq's cities may now be uninhabitable, by the standards of people who are not desperate.
What was the other jet that was near United
93 when it crashed?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi athletes at the Olypmic Games are
speaking out against Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Sierra Club charges the Bush administration with deliberately
suppressing information that people working near the World Trade
Center were in danger from the fumes.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Palestine: A
Very One-Sided War
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The official 9/11 investigation failed to investigate whether the
reported cell phone calls from passengers could really have
worked. It appears that the planes were flying too high for this,
and that the calls must have been faked.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Neither Bush nor Kerry is trying to prepare the US to get through the
effects of decreasing oil production.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces have bombed Najaf heavily, but al Sadr's army
remains determined to fight.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A visit to al Sadr's stronghold.
"Let them starve to death" is the Israeli
state's policy toward all Palestinians--those now in prison, and
those yet to be put in prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya will be the subject of unofficial war crimes trials
in New York City. Too bad they can't really arrest him and
imprison him.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike is motivated by many forms of torture
that are applied in Israeli prisons. Israeli officials call this
nonviolent activism "terrorism".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Like Bush, their policy is, "lies built on a foundation of lies."
When Nader criticized Sharon's power over US policy towards Israel,
the Anti-Defamation League called him a "bigot". However,
criticizing
governments is not racism. This particular false accusation is
frequently used against anyone who criticies Israeli policy.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Here is Ralph Nader's response to the Anti-Defamation League.
If the ADL makes this policy consistent, it will accuse me, and my (Jewish) Israeli friends and relatives, of hating Jews. That would make the accusation totally absurd and divorced from reality.
World military spending nears 1 trillion dollars per year, mainly as a result of increased US spending. And this doesn't include the costs of war.
Compared with the 500 billion that the US will spend, some 9 billion
dollars (almost 2 percent) are unaccounted for in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Some of this money went to Iraqis, who are mostly unemployed. Some of it went to Cheney and his rich cronies.
Bush gambles as Najaf burns.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The 9/11 Commission
report has contradictions and mysterious omissions
in regard to how the hijackings were handled by the FAA and NORAD.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Climate modeling yields projections of sour wine, less milk,
and sweltering heat in US cities that are currently livable.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Is Kerry really a lesser evil? Or is this just a distraction from what's really wrong in the US?
Saudi Arabia says it has imprisoned a US citizen at the request of the
Bush regime, which pretends that it can't get Saudi Arabia to release
him.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush follows the Humpty Dumpty approach to laws: they mean what Bush says they mean. It follows that the Bush regime has no more legal standing than any criminal.
Where Kerry
really stands on the environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
How Bush
sullied the once heroic term "draft evader."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US is
cutting the funds for AIDS treatment; Bush is trying to
provide just enough to keep the problem out of the news until after
the election.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Since treatment delayed costs much more, the only way this policy makes sense is if it is intended to kill these people. However, at least it is a positive sign that it suggests Bush is acting as if there will really be an election.
(Temporary) Continuance of the American Way of Life At Stake in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
At least if oil consumption decreases it may limit the extent of global warning.
When the poor-middle class can't afford to live in suburbs and drive around any more, they are likely to move into cities and semi-gentrify them, forcing the poor into the suburbs where they can't go anywhere except by occasional buses designed to take them to and from work.
Sharon has torn up Bush's "road map" by announcing plans to
expand settlements in Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The annexation wall is designed to
take Palestine's water,
leaving many Palestinian farmers with none.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Anticipatory harrassment of activists by police and federal
agents: sometimes they tell your boss you are a "terrorist",
trying to scare you that you'll be fired.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
More information on the plans to impose round the clock surveillance
on 56 activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
If I were one of them, I'd have lots of fun giving those police watchers a hard time.
Free software voting machines
are a step forward,
but not enough.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Mordechai Vanunu defied the prohibition on speaking to non-Israelis by
giving a series of interviews to the press.
Here is an interview with
Democracy Now.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A Republican congressman made news saying it was a
"mistake" to attack Iraq,
and entertains the possibility that he was lied to by Bush & Co.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
He is not running for re-election--perhaps others who do seek reelection are afraid to speak up. But why should this be, when polls show most of the public even now thinks it was wrong?
Forgotten news: On Sep 12, 2001, William Safire reported that the Bush administration received terrorist threats from someone who knew internal communications codes.
As far as I know, the official investigation has not even looked at this. (If I'm wrong, please let me know.)
A
volcanic collapse in the Canary Islands could scour the east coast
of North America, and there could be nothing left on many islands in
the Carribean.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Abu Ghraib whistleblower is
getting death threats.
Apparently some people in the army are angry that
their friends are getting punished.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Developments in neuroscience are starting to endanger the
freedom to think--even inside one's own head.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Barbie in a Blender Day celebrates a court victory over
Mattel's attempts to censor art.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This note is a little too late for this year's celebration, but if they do it next year, you'll have a lot of time to prepare.
The Iraqi police in Najaf ordered all journalists to leave, then shot at them when mere orders did not suffice.
2000 civilians, unarmed from now, have gone to Najaf
to act as
"human shields" for al Sadr.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A year after a major US power blackout, Bush still
supports the deregulation policies that caused it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US military investigation of torture in Abu Ghraib is a blatant
whitewash, leaving the generals free to order
others to do the torture in future.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A year after a major US power blackout, Bush
still supports the
deregulation policies that caused it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US military investigation of torture in Abu Ghraib is a blatant
whitewash, leaving the generals free to order others to do the torture
in future.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Starbucks is making false accusations in an attempt to fire a union
organizer.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi puppet government has banned Al Jazeera for giving "a bad picture of Iraq". Interestingly, this does not accuse Al Jazeera of lying.
"Bad picture" could mean that Al Jazeera was not parroting the official line, or that it is as biased as US media but in a different direction.
Al-Sadr's militia is
gaining strength as Shi'as in Iraq
become increasingly hostile to the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
UK
oks use of evidence obtained by torture (in Guantanamo) provided
the torture wasn't "connived at" by the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The claim that torture in Guantanamo is not supported by the UK government is absurd, given the decades-long practice where each government spies on the other country's citizens for the other country's government.
Bush is
using the distraction provided by Iraq as cover to change many
federal regulations--generally to favor business and shaft the public.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi puppet government has
charged Ahmed Chalabi and Salem
Chalabi (organizer of Saddam Hussein's trial) counterfeiting and
murder, respectively.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
It looks to me like a gang of thieves falling out. I would not be shocked if the charges were true, nor if they were a complete frame-up; both sides are so far from honesty.
Venezuelan President Chavez won the recall referendum.
I'm proud to say that I was asked for, and gave, a message of support for his campaign. I hope I gained a few votes for him among free software users.
A good critique of the values of modern economics, first published in
1966.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian prisoners on
hunger strike--many of whom have never
been charged with a crime--are demanding decent food, family visits
and not to be kept for long periods in solitary confinement.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
An Israeli official described the hunger strike as "terrorism".
Bigotry against lower castes in India remains so strong--and so cruel--that they are almost entirely excluded from most professional and business jobs.
US government "terror alerts" magnify the intended effect of terrorism, which is to disrupt people's lives and minds.
Meanwhile, when the administration gets real information, its response
may
be not to issue any warning.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This reinforces the conclusion that these "terror alerts" serve no purpose except to scare people.
A group of bereaved parents has begun organizing an anti-induction
campaign, aimed at getting recruits
to refuse to join the IDF.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
It's all-out war in Najaf again. The Bush forces won't estimate civilian casualties because they don't want people to think about them.
They may be following the Vietnam-War practice of counting all dead bodies as "insurgents", to present massacres as victories.
Kerry says he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he
had known Saddam had no weapons of mass distruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Does Kerry say what reason he believes would have justified this war?
A timeline of Bush administration actions in regard to Iraq shows that
the administration, not intelligence agencies, were to blame for
the false warnings about Iraqi weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A father in the UK calls on Blair to get his son, who is being
tortured, out of Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush now
opposes inspections in the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, in
effect making the treaty much less effective.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps Bush gives low priority to the danger posed by development of weapons of mass distruction, when they are not a convenient excuse. Or perhaps he intends to invade every country that develops them and feels a treaty is superfluous.
You and I might call Bush a paranoid megalomaniac and mean it loosely.
Various psychiatrists say this, and
mean it literally.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Porter Goss, Bush's nominee to run the CIA, wants to officially
authorize the CIA to spy on Americans inside the US, and even to
arrest people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Presbyterian Church criticized Israel's annexation wall.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US government funds "democratic change" in countries whose elected leaders are not to its taste.
The Democratic Party's platform is as militaristic as Bush's policies.
Most Americans are coming to oppose the war, but neither
major party represents these views.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Nixon prologed the Vietnam War for political purposes even though he had already concluded it was lost. This is an example of the "never admit a mistake" attitude that we often see in governments, but especially in Bush.
Dubya's nominee to head the CIA told Michael Moore's interviewers that he isn't qualified to work at the CIA.
GIs in Iraq are asking, "Why are we
here"? They have a "pervasive sense that Iraqis do not want their
help", which means they have more sense than Bush or Kerry.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I would guess that the governor of Anbar, who doesn't want the Bush forces to leave, was installed by the Bush forces and figures that the resistance will consider him a collaborator.
An Iraqi official in Basra is calling for
secession of that region from Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The breakup of Iraq has been a fairly likely possibility ever since the Bush forces invaded. Hatred for Bush and his men could make Iraqis stick together voluntarily, or a new dictator (perhaps Bush-installed, perhaps not) might in theory be able to impose unity on the whole country.
Opposition is growing even in the UK government to the tyrannical
anti-terrorism laws there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US government is using businesses to spy intensively on Americans in ways that it is legally prohibited from doing directly.
In order to give companies less information about me, I don't buy retail goods with credit cards, and I don't carry a portable phone. Portable phones report your whereabouts constantly, even when you are not using them.
For crushing the resistance in Sadr City, the
epidemic of typhoid there could be more effective than the
Bush-imposed daily curfew.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
6000 or so US soldiers have been
wounded in recent wars, most of them
in the Bush forces in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Note the subtle propaganda in labeling the invasion of Iraq as part of the "War on Terrorism", since it had nothing to do with that.
Rove's White House
'Murder, Inc.'
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US government is using businesses to spy intensively on Americans in ways that it is legally prohibited from doing directly.
In order to give companies less information about me, I don't buy retail goods with credit cards, and I don't carry a portable phone. Portable phones report your whereabouts constantly, even when you are not using them.
Blair's "Labor" party has helped the rich in the UK get richer
while doing nothing about poverty.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The problem of unverifiable electronic voting machines
is being addressed by some states, but
others are failing to act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
How the TV broadcasters effectively
copyright Bush's
blunders, and use this power to protect him.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Secret Service has been
circulating fliers showing pictures of
political activists, as if they were planning to attack Bush
physically rather than just attack his conduct. And they have tried
to cover it up, too.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A challenge invites people to find and document security holes in electronic voting machines.
These people have confused hacking with cracking, but I've made a link anyway because this activity is important.
The TSA confiscated a Baptist peace organization's peace banner,
calling it
"security threat". They also threatened to destroy it
summarily.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The arrogant tyrants in the TSA are more of a danger to our freedom than any terrorists could be.
Information Liberation, by Brian Martin.
Of course, I don't agree with all of the many ideas in this book; it would be an amazing coincidence if I did. Nonetheless, it is well worth reading.
Chapter 3 is partly weakened by its use of the term "intellectual property", which tends to lead people to lump together disparate legal issues. Martin has mostly managed to resist the confusing effect of this term, though not entirely. (For instance, the basic purpose of trademarks has nothing to do with providing an incentive for anything in particular. Rather, it is so that buyers can be sure of what they are buying.)
You can play it much safer by not using that term at all, and by thinking about copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets as entirely separate issues.
A
woman is running for president of Afghanistan, defying
intimidation.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
A former deputy chief of the Mossad (Israel's spy service) denounced the
army as having discarded its ethics.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
It is interesting that the chief of the army responded by suggesting that Toledano didn't understand Israel's security needs. If he doesn't, who does?
The Israeli army destroyed
40,000 olive and fruit trees in Beit Hanoun, as "reprisals" for a
few rockets. They destroyed houses and factories too, and stole cash.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Idema, on trial in Afghanistan, claims Pentagon
support for his private torture operation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
He could be making this up, but I would not be surprised if it were true. Rumsfeld called him a "mercenary", which he probably is, but that does not contradict his story. The Pentagon employs thousands of mercenaries, and some of them have been employed to torture prisoners.
Blair is facing demands to reopen the inquiry
about Dr Kelly since information was withheld. A majority of the
UK now say Blair lied to make an excuse for war.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Public Citizen reports:
Kerry has raised significantly more than Bush from lawyers and the media/entertainment industry.
(See http://www.whitehouseforsale.org)
If Kerry wins, he will probably pay his managers by supporting further draconian extensions in copyright law, and escalating the War on Sharing.
Indonesia's trials for war crimes in East Timor were a sham: everyone was let off, except for two Timorese. ETAN calls for UN trials.
The UK plans to protect dolphins which are being killed by the thousands by fishing for striped bass.
The Sudanese army is working closely with the Janjaweed militias to kill non-Muslim civilians in southern Sudan.
Israel regularly
imprisons Palestinians without charging them
with any crime, sometimes over and over. They can't have family
visits because the guards say, "Prove this is your mother."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The increasing price of oil is likely to mean big changes
in the American way of life--and, to the extent it has been
imitated by other countries, in their way of life also.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's prisoners
at Guantanamo have been tortured like those in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Privatization in the UK
has been a failure in its own terms.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
How doctors assisted torture in Iraq, and helped to cover it up.
Here is more information on how the
right-wing smear machine
fabricates accusations, then tries to make them seem like truth
through repetition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
John Scarlett
, new head of MI-6, has been personally inculpated for
secretly pushing the weapons inspection in team to lie about its
findings. (They defied Scarlett's pressure and released a report
saying they had found nothing significant.)
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush invasion
of Iraq has had the ironic effect of strengthening
the position of Iran in the region. You wouldn't expect Bush to want to do this,
but hey, religious fanatics have to stick together.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
John Kerry
needs a lesson on Latin American democracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors Without Boarders
has pulled out of Afghanistan after some of
its people were killed by the Taliban. Afghanistan was never given
the aid it was promised after the war.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush administration
scored an "own goal", arresting a spy inside
Al Qa'ida. Bush was telling the truth, for once, when he said,
"Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country
and our people, and neither do we."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A Republican Congressman
admitted seeking to prevent Detroit voters from voting. Some people argue that "Detroit" stands for "Black". It might be
true, but I don't think it makes any difference which one he meant.
Either way, it is contrary to the spirit of democracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
FBI harrassment of anarchists in the US includes giving them subpoenas
to appear in court when they were planning to go to protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Gulf War Syndrome may be due to low level exposure to some of Saddam's chemical weapons, after they were hit by a US bomb and spread through the air.
It occurs to me that most of the civilians in Iraq were probably exposed too.
The Internation Red Cross says that former Guantanamo prisoners could
have a real case for war crimes prosecution of their captors.
Meanwhile, many retired judges and former FBI director Sessions
(under Bush I) have condemned the Bush administration legal
opinions that purported to legitimize torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The handful of people who took control of most of Russia's wealth after the fall of the Soviet Union are now boasting of how they did it. Privatization gave them their predictable opportunity. They gained full control of the media, got Yeltsin reelected, then ruled through him. Putin chased them out of Russia, but they managed to take a lot of riches with them.
Putin has since taken control of all media in Russia himself, kicking out journalists that criticized the government. It appears that Russia today is democratic in form, but not in fact.
The Thai National Human Rights Commission condemned the Thai government for trampling civil liberties.
The Bush forces have
lost control over much of Iraq;
the puppet government is ineffective, and probably
will be unable to hold the promised elections.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Before the war, I said I would support an invasion to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussain's dictatorship, provided (1) the Iraqi people wanted this kind of liberation and (2) we could trust the invading forces to establish freedom and democracy. But I didn't think either of these conditions was true. Events have confirmed they were not.
The Iraqi resistance doesn't believe in freedom or democracy any more than Bush does, and uses tactics as brutal in their own way as the Bush forces' tactics. But I still hope they win, because they are better than a foreign occupying army whose real purpose is to help corporations steal the country's wealth. The end result will probably be another dictatorship, but it will probably kill fewer Iraqis than the Bush dictatorship.
A dictator is never legitimate, so I will once again be ready support an invasion to liberate Iraq from the new dictatorship, provided (1) the Iraqi people want this kind of liberation and (2) we can trust the invading forces to establish freedom and democracy. But the first condition surely won't be true, and I'd be skeptical about the second if someone like Bush or Kerry is in charge.
The National Geographic Society officially isn't a business, but it
now acts on behalf of businesses: its magazine for children is
loaded with ads for candy and junk food.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This article says how to contact the head of the society to express your views about this.
How Bush misuses "intelligence information" to mislead
people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Wouldn't it be ironic if the prisoner told that lie because he realized it would help Bush attack Iraq, which in turn would help Al Qa'ida? Naturally Dubya fell straight into the trap.
"Intelligence information" in the hands of the inexperienced and stupid can easily turn into "stupidity information".
Colombia's president Uribe, whose US-funded government presides over a paramilitary death squads, was listed in 1991 as a major drug trafficker.
An Iraqi group has counted almost
40,000 Iraqi civilians
killed since the invasion by Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forcesd don't try to keep track of Iraqi casualties, neither military nor civilian, because they figure that "out of sight, out of mind".
Prisoners in Guantanamo have been tortured like prisoners in Iraq. They were tortured, for instance, into making confessions that are demonstrably false. Some are reported to be going crazy from long isolation. Meanwhile, the evidence now shows that the UK government was complicit in the torture practices.
The Bush forces have been
imprisoning minors as young as 12,
and
appear to hold around 100 minors in prison now. Some of them have
been tortured.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
It's hard to imagine what crime a child of 12 would be suspected of, but recall that the Bush forces have a practice taking hostages. When they can't find the person they want to arrest, they arrest people in his family and keep them prisoner. Some of these children may be hostages.
Sibel Edmonds
open letter to Thomas Kean points out several forms of
malfeasance at the FBI which the the 9/11 investigation has failed to
investigate.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Halliburto
is being investigated for illegal ties with Iran under Cheney's adm
inistration.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
India is building a new highway
right through wildlife preserves. It
threatens to destroy the largest remaining population of wild tigers,
along with various other species.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Household garbage from Ireland is persistently being sent to India despite treaties banning the practice.
Israeli scholars have given the army a document spelling out the
ethical ways to fight Palestinian fighters;
but the army ignores it,
and continues shooting innocents, torturing them in public, and
knocking down houses on top of old people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The army destroyed a food-processing plant just after it was set up by
a charitable foundation hoping to give Palestinians some work and
income.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The implicit message of this attack was that Israel is determined to reduce Palestinians to poverty, and will destroy any help that they get.
Workers at a chicken slaughterhouse were found to be regularly
torturing the chickens. People are upset about this.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
I see a different scandal here. These workers were cruel to the chickens to take out their anger at the management for making them work too long hours. Instead of punishing these workers, we should help them form a strong union.
There is
evidence that the US is keeping hundreds of disappeared
prisoners on prison ships kept 3 miles off Diego Garcia.
This is like a secret version of Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Regarding the exile of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia: it can be justified to take private lands for a military base, but those who are thus evicted are entitled to compensation, and they shouldn't be exiled among another people.
A senator is now
accusing NORAD of lying about the events of 9/11.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Seabirds in Scotland are
being wiped out; this year they are failing
to raise any young. They are the victims of an ecological chain
reaction caused by global warming. In a few years they may be gone.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps small populations of a few species will be able to find enough to eat. Or perhaps such a small population would be wiped out by predators. (These birds find safety in their numbers.)
The right-wing conspiracy that attacked Clinton is now operating against Kerry's wife.
Here we see how it operates: by persistently making disproportionate fuss about minor things. Often the things are distortions of the facts, or are not actually bad, but sufficient media criticism makes them look bad and their truthfulness is then irrelevant. Recall what was done to Howard Dean: his go-get-em war cry was broadcast over and over, minus the noise of the crowd in the room, and thus made to seem peculiar.
Bush is
trying to push NATO to support the occupation of Iraq, and
France is blocking it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US military is trying to limit the blame for torture to the underlings who were taught to carry it out. Meanwhile, Congressman Markey is courageously trying to end the US government practice of disappearing people at whim into countries that will torture them.
The FBI is questioning many political activists about supposed plans to "hurt people", which they surely have fabricated.
I think the decision to suspect political dissidents is meant as both intimidation and propaganda. Some may be too scared to protest; meanwhile, the protestors are smeared in the public's eyes. Instead of saying that all protestors are terrorists (which has been tried), they point at each protestor and ask, "Are you a terrorist?" It has the same effect.
The obvious parody web site http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk bothered the UK government so much that they asked the operator to take it down.
Greg Palast:
Has Johnnie been good?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The US is turning into a nation of prisons. Over 2 million Americans are in prison. Almost 7 million (over 2% of the population) are in prison or parole.
Beware the mythical super-pot.
Garment sweatshops in many countries will be closed
as China welcomes them all.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The corporate owners of the song This land is my land are threatening to sue people who used it to lampoon Bush and Kerry. The concept that parody words "damage" a song is a perversion promulgated by philistines who appreciate music only as an income-producing property.
Pressure increases for reform of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, against Arafat's control.This is in anticipation of Sharon's talk of removing Israeli settlements and troops from Gaza.
The
"free speech zone" in Boston carries limitation and harrassment of
protestors to an extreme. It impossible to really protest there, but
people who look like they might want to try are threatened by police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Swedish government grabbed two people and
suddenly deported them without a hearing to Egypt,
where they were tortured. The plane that
brought them there was apparently a US plane.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Swedish government is now complaining they were lied to; Egypt promised not to torture these people, but tortured them anyway. However, that's ducking the issue. The Swedish government surely has laws to require people get hearings before they are deported. It should not have let people be arrested and shipped off unwillingly to any country respecting their rights.
Swedes should press their government on this issue until it falls from power and is replaced by one that respects civil liberties.
Iran:
Secularist critic of the regime sentenced to five years in
prison. Nigeria: smear campaign against atheists.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi insurgents are
taking hostages to pressure various countries
to withdraw troops from Iraq, and to show the government's weakness.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This is a despicable tactic, but we have to remember that the Bush forces have done things just as bad (and did so before the insurgents). The Bush forces have even held hostages in Iraq, and probably still imprison them, although they have not killed them.
The Bush forces in Iraq are considering
the idea that they should stay out of the cities and stop patrolling.
The idea is to let Iraqis do all the work of keeping the
Bush forces in power.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Here's an example of what it looks like:
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This might be an effective idea in some other time and place, but given how much Iraqis hate the Bush forces, and their tendency to attack Iraqi collaborators, I don't think it will work. It may reduce non-Iraqi casualties, but it can't win.
British MPs
As a group of British MPs were looking at the place where British activist Tom Hurndall was shot by Israeli troops,
they were fired at by Israeli troops.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Teaching Torture: Congress Quietly Keeps School of the Americas Alive
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Fighting Israel's Wall - by ANN PETTER
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Farmers in Colombia are trying to organize and practice sustainable
agriculture,
but they have been attacked by paramilitaries.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
These paramilitaries are supported by the Colombian government with US backing and perhaps US funds too.
We are seeing
a pattern of attacks on the careers of musicians and
performers who criticize Bush. It adds up to censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I think hotel owners should be able to decide who can speak at their hotels, and radio stations should be able to decide what songs to play. This has the effect of censorship today because industry is concentrated in few hands and performers don't dare offend them. You could write a protest song about Iraq today, but no matter how good it is, people would only hear it on the Internet.
To end corprate rule and restore democracy requires breaking up the large corporations. Radio and TV are no exception.
Kerry is starting, reluctantly, to talk about the
problem of
disenfranchisement of Black voters.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Japan is buying votes in the International Whaling Commission in a campaign to allow resumed whaling.
Florida Governor Bush is flouting a court order to
prevent many ex-felons from regaining their voting rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Kerry, who declines to call Bush a liar,
apologized for people who called Bush a thug.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The original thuggees were religious fanatics that killed for their religion. Doesn't Bush qualify?
The US and Saudi Arabia
released terrorist suspects in a deal designed
to gain partial Saudi support for the invasion of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
It is possible that the Saudis in Guantanamo deserved to be released; they certainly did not deserve to be held without trial, or tortured. However, the prisoners released in return by the Saudis were convicted of a car bombing, and their release was not due to doubts about their guilt. It was just a deal.
This is one of many ways that Bush accepted an increased danger of terrorism increase in order to achieve his real goal.
About half the carbon dioxide humans have released
into the air
has gone into the ocean. While this as prevented global warming
from proceeding even faster, it also puts the survival of shellfish
in danger.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Many "US" companies are incorporating offshore to avoid taxes.
Both Bush and Cheney were active in doing this with their
own companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Sharon caused an uproar by publicly urging Jews to leave France to escape anti-semitism there.
Ironically, Sharon is largely responsible for the anti-semitism in France. Thoughtful people criticize Israeli government cruelty without being anti-semitic, but not everyone is thoughtful, so Israel's cruel treatment of Palestinians tends to result in increased anti-semitism.
Chirac might well respond by inviting Jews to move from Israel to France. There are so many reasons he might give: to avoid the domination of the ultra-orthodox, to avoid being inculpated or dragged into the Israeli government's bestial behavior, etc.
The Democratic Party's decision to woo wealthier voters, and abandon the cause of the workers against the rich, led to a situation where in many areas poor Americans support the Republicans more even as they get poorer.
Muslim militias in the Sudan are systematically raping the non-Muslim women, as well as killing the men.
Get the unofficial Michelin Guide to Israeli Prisons...before Michelin shuts it down.
Israeli troops
shot two Palestinian bystanders in their own home.
With helicopters shooting missiles into a populated area, it's a
wonder they didn't kill more civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli forces claim these attacks on civilian areas are for "safety", but the main perpetrators of violence in the region are Israeli troops, and most of the civilians killed are killed by them.
Farmers in India are killing themselves as drought makes them unable to pay their debts.
Offering government compensation to the families is a kind gesture, but what the Indian government really needs to do is consider the needs of farmers who are still alive. Otherwise it is driving them to kill themselves.
The Iraqi resistance has stepped up its attacks since the
handover of nominal authority to Iraqis.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Over 10,000 troops in the Bush forces have been wounded so far; I don't know how many of those were serious wounds, but it is a lot of casualties.
The US is moving to
cut off aid to Uzbekistan. It is the right thing
to do, but it's so unlike Bush to do anything right that I have to
wonder if some subtle evil scheme lurks behind it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush plans to allow lots of
logging of trees in large areas now protected.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Sunni leaders in Iraq
call for war. (I wonder if the one who was imprisoned was tortured.)
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi professors are being
systematically murdered. We don't know by whom.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Western journalists
no longer dare travel around Iraq,
which has the result that Bush forces can bomb a wedding
party and deny it, and nobody can even say it isn't so.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
What does
"sovereignty" mean in Iraq?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Seymour Hersh reports seeing
a video of Iraqi prisoners being raped.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Gulf War Syndrome victims get a hearing in the UK. We don't know what the cause or causes are, but we know from the figures that it is a real problem.
Bush is trying to
eliminate overtime pay for 6 million US workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
Uncritical support for Israeli policies in the US now comes more from Christian fanatics than from Jews. The fanatics are not concerned for the well being of Israelis, any more than they are for Palestinians, but rather seek to bring about conditions they believe will trigger the end of the world. Can anyone get more crazy than that?
By trying to make propecies come true, these fanatics are treating their supposed god as a sort of machine, preprogrammed to activate the desired sequence of events whenever certain conditions are met. "God, activate world destruct sequence." The god responds, "Enter password." So they arrange for a new temple in Jerusalem to be constructed, and the god says, "Destruct sequence activated."
And to think that people used to accuse engineers of worshiping the machine.
They have a backup system, too: in case no god shows up to carry out the prophecies, they are burning up all the oil. At least they will get another flood.
Sibel Edmonds isn't even allowed to tell a court where she was born.
This article also gives more info about the
treachery she found inside the FBI, which has been covered up.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Life expectancy in parts of Africa is
under 40 years, due to AIDS.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Previous UK inquiries about false reports of Iraqi weapons were kept in the dark. The responsibility for this is narrowing in towards Blair.
Fallujah: inside the Iraqi resistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I am not sure how to reconcile the statements in this article about a friendship between Fallujah and Saddam with statements elsewhere about a hostile relationship between them. Perhaps someone who knows can explain.
Kerry would keep troops in Iraq longer than Bush.
Former officials who urged Bush to attack Iraq are now
working for companies that profit from the war.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush could try to
manipulate the election by faking a terrorist
alert on election day, timed to prevent voting in California cities.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Given that we know some past terror alerts were fishy, and given that the Bush campaign cheated in 2000, we cannot regard this danger as beyond consideration.
You might wonder why I am concerned about fixing or canceling the election, given that Kerry agrees with Bush on the major issues of the day. The reason is that elections may someday provide a chance to peacefully obtain leaders that stand for freedom and democracy. Even if there is no hope of this in 2004, there may be some day.
More evidence about how false intelligence about Iraqi weapons
was obtained and used in Washington.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Insiders who wanted an invasion of Iraq surely had contacts with each other. Richard Perle certainly knows Cheney. I would expect ties can be found between Woolsey and people such as Cheney who profit from the war.
We can envision what was happening: while Cheney and Bush were trying to pull something out of the DIA that they could use, Woolsey and Perle were pushing from the other side.
The Bush regime has been
denying data about Iraq expenses to UN auditors.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
How slimy it is to praise the auditors to sidestep the failure to help them. A lack of cooperation from the entity being audited is surely a "challenging environment"--and whose fault is that?
The UK is considering legalizing brothels as a way of helping the women who have been pressured into prostitution.
There is no legitimate reason to prohibit prostitution.
Information that MI6 knew the supposed evidence for Iraqi weapons was false was withheld from previous inquiries in the UK.
It looks like the blame for this deception is becoming localized in the highest levels of Blair's government.
A major British bank is closing the bank account of the British National Party.
The BNP is racist and right-wing, and I don't agree with it at all. Islam, like Christianity, is very dangerous, but people have a right to believe in it and should not be the victims of prejudice.
However, that is no excuse for closing the BNP's bank account. To close a political party's bank account is tantamount to banning the party.
Banks should not be allowed to close anyone's account, except for cause such as misbehavior towards the bank or a criminal conviction.
The editor of the
Russian edition of Forbes was shot and killed,
apparently for his writing about rich Russians who are probably
criminals. Meanwhile, freedom of speech in Russian mass media is
being eliminated even more thoroughly than in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Even the
GAO says that US government "terror alerts" are meaningless.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A
Russian journalist who writes about rich people (who are often
criminals) was assassinated--apparently because they don't
want to be written about.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Official protest against the Democratic National Convention is supposed to occur in an unfree "free speech zone" where there is room for only 1000 or so people, each of whom is to be searched by police. Gas masks, to protect against police attacks such as occur frequently at protests, are prohibited. People who go in will be sitting ducks.
So the Black Tea Society
calls on protestors to refuse to use this zone, and protest elsewhere.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Militarisation of the US is proceeding on a number of parallel tracks,
which add up to the end of everything the US is supposed to stand for.
This article
explains how they fit together.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I am not convinced that Al Qa'ida is "a CIA asset"--the arguments I saw for that have too many possible weak points. But these arguments seem pretty convincing.
Ken Lay has been indicted for operating "The Microsoft of the energy world".
Microsoft's crimes are larger and more harmful, but they are also subtler, so it has been able to buy its way out of trouble despite being convicted twice in court.
The most central part of economics is the value system it assumes to be everyone's sole motivation: personal gain. By repeating this assumption, it acts as propaganda convincing people to submerge other aspects of their personality, other motivations. In other words, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There is evidence that studying economics makes people more selfish in general; it does not surprise me to learn that a robber baron like Lay started out as an economist.
Bush and his supporters participate in a "social phantasy system", where they reinforce each other's false beliefs and become increasingly disconnected from reality.
The Republicans failed in their attempt to limit marriage to heterosexuals, but Bush vows to continue trying.
The bizarre assumption in Bush's speech is that the existence of homosexual couples ruins marriage for all other Americans. I know a recently-married homosexual couple--the invitation to their party was the first such invitation I have ever accepted. I invite Bush to meet them, and then tell us if they have damaged his marriage.
Is the International Space Station failing so fast that will soon have to be abandoned? This article argues for that.
I hope it isn't true. I don't have enough expertise to judge for myself.
Overfishing in the North Atlantic threatens to wipe out the population of blue whiting.
Many fish populations around the world are in danger; modern fishing methods are too effective to be sustained. (Many of them also destroy other animals.)
Blaming the CIA for "mistaken intelligence" about Iraq overlooks the political pressure from above and its influence on the CIA's evaluation of available information.
911 Truth is campaigning for an
honest and thorough investigation of the many suspicious
circumstances involving the 9/11 attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Governments are endangering the neutrality of NGOs, which in the end puts their ability to operate in danger.
Israel is profiting from the Bush invasion of Iraq to arm Kurds to
fight Iran. The Kurds can use the same arms to fight Turkey, or
the Bushist government of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Iranians do not like their Islamic government very much, but if anything could make them support it, it would be an external attack like this. Whether deliberately or carelessly, Bush is paving the way to strengthen Islamic terrorism yet again.
Stupid White Movie: What Michael
Moore Misses About the Empire
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Deepening
Crisis in America's Prisons
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Public Citizen defeated Bush's attempt to trash the US govt rules for nuclear waste disposal. When it was found that the planned Yucca Mountain site didn't meet the established criteria, Bush wanted to do away with the criteria.
Bush will surely try again if he has a chance.
Disposing of the waste unsafely is not the right way to handle it. However, if the waste can't goin Yucca Mountain, where SHOULD it go?
Reports say that the WTO is on the path towards a treaty that would
restrict vitamin supplements and herbal medicine.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The most important point here, as I see it, is the way the WTO subjugates democracy. For democracy's sake, we have to abolish the WTO.
People are "liberating" aquarium fish in the wrong ocean, and this is
causing ecological damage. Fish can reproduce like kudzu when they
enter an ecosystem where nothing eats them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Increased CO2 in air causes peat bogs to release carbon in the form of
CO2. We can expect around twice
as as much global warming as was previously estimated.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Don't buy property less than 100 feet above sea level.
How
Big Brother Is Watching, Listening and Misusing Information About
You
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A planned execution in India has stimulated a strong campaign to abolish the death penalty.
Here are some examples.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush wants legislation to enable the Department of Homeland Security
to
postpone the November election. Perhaps forever--or till the "end"
of the "war on terrorism", which would mean forever.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
Various rebel groups in the Congo are jointly committing the genocide of the pygmies.
The UN has asked to talk with the prisoners held by the US outside the US, to assure they are being treated humanely.
A Canadian Muslim women's group warn that allowing Shari'a courts for
divorce will result in pressuring them to use these courts, and the
results could be
systematically harmful to women.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The DMCA, the law that prohibits free software for important purposes
such as viewing a DVD, has been interpreted
to prohibit independent support providers for a proprietary software
package. It's as if it were illegal for you to hire an
unauthorized mechanic to service your car.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The decision is preliminary, but if it stands up, many proprietary software developers may use the same method to forbid users access to parts of their software.
I refer to this article for the sake of the factual information in it, but its general assumptions are questionable. The intended purpose of the DMCA was to impose DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) on the public, not merely to prevent private copying (although preventing private copying is bad enough!).
The term "piracy" embodies another assumption: that sharing is wrong. That word is the basis of a propaganda campaign meant to demonize sharing.
The Bush forces hit a car,
killed the driver, then shot the passenger. Then they tried to
threaten journalists who were watching.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Like the Rodney King beating, this is an unusual well-documented instance of a frequent practice that is usually covered up.
After the FBI found that their accusations of terrorism against
artist/professor Steve Kurtz couldn't stand up, they found
a bizarre excuse to charge him with a crime--receiving a sample of
harmless bacteria from another professor. In other words, ordinary
scientific cooperation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI's policy is, "Once we target you, we can always find something to accuse you of."
Given that governments have a pattern of stretching laws to get whoever they want, we cannot afford to give them discretion in the matter. Laws, in order to be just, must constrain the government more clearly. They must be designed to resist the police and prosecutors' attempts to stretch them.
We're making progress in the fight against software
patents in the European Union.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Contrary to what the article says, the campaign against software patents was launched by free software activists, not by the open source movement.
In 2001 we heard that someone had taken out lots of stock options
before 9/11,
suggesting that this someone knew about the attacks in
advance. Three years later, the public has not been told who it was,
but there are signs of a coverup, and an executive at the bank where
these options now works for the CIA.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
A serious and thorough investigation of the 9/11 attacks must investigate this issue, along with many others.
Polls show Venezuelan President Chez headed for a big win in his recall referendum.
Bush and the Republicans should give back what they bought with Enron money.
Iraqi guerrilla leader al Muhammadani, who fought Saddam before, gave
Bush a chance to see what he would do. Now he says Iraq has gone from
one dictator to another, and he is fighting the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops shot a Palestinian boy playing football in Rafah, where they are also demolishing houses again--part of a long-drawn-out campaign of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.
A suicide bombing in Israel typically kills several persons; only one boy was shot in that place at that time. But the relentless shooting of Palestinians kills more people than suicide bombings in Israel used to kill when they were common (and now they are rare). All in all, Israeli terror is several times worse than Palestinian terror.
If we sincerely condemn terrorism, we must not focus on the lesser terror while disregarding or excusing the greater terror. Steps to end the terror are ineffective if they focus narrowly on the lesser terror. A separation wall on the Green Line, one that did not annex Palestinian land, might be a good measure to reduce terror in both directions.
Bush is
pressing Musharraf to take big risks to try to catch some Al Qa'ida
suspects in a hurry (before the election). Previously, Bush
thought it was ok to go slower and avoid the risks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of
Mexican Maize
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Sibel Edmonds reports on a court decision that upheld the Bush
administration, preventing her
from telling us (or even Congress) what she knows about the
antecedents of the Sep 11 attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The
World Court denounced the Israeli annexation wall, saying it
should be torn down. However, the decision has no power, and the Bush
government has rejected it already.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
One of the reasons for suspicion about the official story of what
happened on September 11 is the presence
of strange attachments photographed under one of the planes that
hit the World Trade Center. I know what conclusion to draw from this,
but it appears to come from reputable sources and Boeing's refusal to
explain is very suspicious.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A translation of the article from La Vanguardia (Spain).
The Venezuelan Referendum, Beware Jimmy
Carter!
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is developing procedures for postponing the
next election on account of "terrorism". I guess this means that
he expects to lose the election if it is held.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Having Bush in power is ideal for Al Qa'ida recruitment, and people have wondered if Al Qa'ida might carry out some action in order to make Americans too scared to think.
There are also those who suggest that Bush would cooperate intentionally with the attack. Whether that is true, I do not know, but the conclusion here does not require that assumption. The cooperation Bush provides through actions that help Al Qa'ida recruiting is sufficient.
Depleted Uranium: The Trojan
Horse of Nuclear War
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Blair's former legal advisor condemns
the occupation of Iraq as illegal, and says the Bush forces may be
guilty of war crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Saleh shouldn't feel ashamed of how he was treated in AbuGhraib-- only indignant.
The Bush forces tried to
censor audio from Saddam's hearing, then lied about the
censorship. They also tried to disguise their presence there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush administration continues to support
torture and empoverishment in several Latin American countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush uses
mercenaries for interrogation as a way to sidestep military law
that prohibits torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's policy, at every level: one law for
Bush--another for you.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Blame the Culture of War for the Chaos in the Middle East
General Wiranto, who commanded Indonesia's armed forces while they organized death squads and massacres in East Timor, did not made it into the final stage of voting for president of Indonesia. Wiranto is under international indictment for war crimes.
A non-radical critique of Bush's war and the situation in Iraq.
The Bush regime is keeping veterans ignorant of the health benefits they are entitled to, as a cost-saving measure.
You've got to cut corners somewhere, to make room for those big tax cuts for the rich.
Here is further information about how the FBI responded when Sibel Edmonds warned the leadership of corruption and disregarded warnings. Its persistent policy was to deny problems and cover them up. Eventually the FBI fired her and lied about her.
As for "retroactive classification", that is simply newspeak for keeping the public in the dark.
Canada is considering a bill to
prohibit people from watching non-Canadian satellite TV channels.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This means, among other things, censoring Al Jazeera, which is the source for news about Iraq that isn't what Bush wants people to hear.
This article uses the fashionable propaganda term "intellectual property". Please don't imitate it. Most likely its author isn't aware of the misleading and biased assumptions hidden inside that term. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation.
What
Fahrenheit 911 covers, and what it leaves out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Supreme Court decision condemning Padilla
to limbo was as twisted and disingenuous as the one that put Bush
in office.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery reports on how the Israeli
border police attacked a joint Palestinian-Israeli peaceful
protest to provide the excuse to lie to the Israeli Supreme
Court. The court did not swallow the lie, and it ruled to move the
separation wall.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces have at least 100 child prisoners in Iraq, and they have tortured the children too.
With constant US support, Colombia is moving
towards a dictatorship in which opposition and independent
activity (aside from some armed guerrilla groups they cannot defeat)
are not tolerated.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Here is a sympathetic article about the new Iraqi prime minister, Allawi.
Notably absent from the article is anything about having a record of support for democracy. In any case, it will be hard for Allawi to be seen by Iraqis as anything but Bush's man if he lets Bush stay in control.
Kathy Kelly's sentence for her protest at Fort Benning is over. She
now plans to
support efforts to eliminate the mandatory sentences that have put
other women in prison for many years.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The best way to end the problem of illegal drug sales is to legalize and regulate the drugs--as we do with those extremely dangerous drugs, tobacco and alcohol.
The International Herald Tribune has acknowledged that the world now doubts, and even disbelieves, the unquestionable proposition that the US has moral authority--that it should be a model for others.
The US in the past partially deserved moral authority; it defended human rights and democracy in some countries while intervening in others to crush them. In the 80s, after Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, the US seemed to be learning to do less of the latter. But since 1990 it has got rapidly worse. Clinton subordinated the US government to corporate power, and Bush has broken the back of human rights in the US even though fragments of them linger on. The recent US-supported coup in Haiti, which put gangsters in power, shows what the US means today.
It is good to know that people in other countries are starting to recognize this. Even as the US makes democracy a sham and tears up civil liberties, people still value them elsewhere. Perhaps anger at the US will help some countries find the strength to repudiate their debts and tell the IMF and WTO to buzz off.
John Walker Lindh was going to
testify about Bush regime torture practices in his trial. It
appears the Bush administration gave him a plea bargain (which
included a gag clause) as a way to prevent that testimony from coming
out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Something similar almost happened to Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield.
Even after the Spanish police told the FBI that Brandon Mayfield's fingerprint did
not really match the print on a bag from Madrid, the FBI kept
trying to insist he was involved in the bombing there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the New York Times article that Cassel refers to. It is clear that the FBI saw in Mayfield the kind of person they wanted to lock up, never mind for what. Never mind that he had never been to Spain.
The Bush administration has a pattern of accusing people who act as lawyers for accused terrorists. They can deprive these suspects of a fair trial if they make good lawyers too scared to represent them.
The US government demands fingerprints of all foreigners entering the US, with the exception of certain countries. If this applies to you, you had best to stay away from the US. If the authorities don't like your face, and if your fingerprint vaguely resembles one that they found on a murder weapon somewhere, they will have an excuse they can stretch to accuse you. The Spanish police can't always be in a position to help, and they might not even let you have a trial.
Former Halliburton employees say that management was deliberately cheating the US government.
However, Halliburton is allowed to do this; the Vice President must have told them it's ok.
One reason police act like bullies and tyrants is that the government
gives them the power that defines a tyrant: the power to put you in prison
simply for disagreeing with them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This example is from the US, but I would not be surprised if things are similar in other countries.
Police are well known to lie outright (they call it "testilying") to put people in prison. After such lies are exposed, even officials generally condemn them, and governments will usually though grudgingly reconsider convictions shown to be based on lies. When a law gives police power to make you guilty of a crime on their mere say-so, the injustice is the same, but the entire state is complicit in it. Since no outright lie about facts is involved, there is nothing to expose--except that the government has made its police into tyrants.
At large protests, the protestors often intervene to un-arrest people that the police have unjustly arrested, before the police can take them away. If there had been a crowd of protestors where that women was unjustly arrested, they might have been able to save her.
An Israeli Supreme Court decision requires
rerouting of separation wall so as to reduce the confiscation of
Palestinian land and the harm imposed on their lives. It's not
entirely the right thing, since it accepts building the wall through
the Palestinian territories, but it says that the wall cannot serve a
political purpose such as annexation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Real-time video editing technology makes it easy to
produce lying videos.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I think that the most important danger in this is the loss of the possibility for factual evidence to contradict official lies.
Bush has shown us clearly how the government of a corporate-dominated country with corporate-dominated media can lie, and have its lies repeated and supported so widely that it takes moral courage to disbelieve them. Bush did not need fake video to make people believe that Saddam Hussein had ties with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, or that Saddam was still developing nuclear and chemical weapons, or that Bush was going to give Iraq freedom and democracy. All were lies; those people who were skeptical of Bush recognized them as probable lies even before the proof came out, but most Americans wanted to believe them. Bush also led Americans to believe that the Bush forces were treating prisoners decently. Americans wanted to believe this.
Photos provided the evidence that gave the lie Bush's claims to have ended torture in Iraq.
Without the ability to produce photos as evidence, I'm afraid that anyone who contradicts the official lies will be unable to convince the public. It will be easy to tell oneself that the whistleblower or dissident is the liar, so that one can comfortably believe the government is honest, and the whistleblower will have no means to prove his report is true. Police who say that the protestors attacked them will soon be able to fabricate seamless false video as "evidence" for this. They already tried doing this in Sweden after the protests in Gothenburg, but that time they were caught. When they learn to do a better job, they may not be caught.
We are getting ever closer to a "democracy" conducted by citizens living in a virtual reality controlled by the government. This is no democracy.
You don't have to go to Abu Ghraib to find Americans abusing authority. The police in Miami attacked, injured, arrested, and then tortured dissidents during the protests against FTAA. It was systematic and planned campaign of violence, and like the invasion of Iraq, it was preceded by a systematic campaign of lies to create an excuse.
I expect there will be similar scenes in Boston and New York this summer. In 1968, when Chicago police rioted at the Democratic Convention, it was covered on television. This time, it will not be a riot, but a planned attack, and today's corporate media will probably cover only the police spin.
Prize-winning American journalists report on the important stories they were not allowed to publish in the major US media.
Clive Smith has
saved a number of innocent people from being executed. Now he
plans to work for release of those imprisoned without trial in
Guantanamo Bay.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
The most important part of this article is the casual carelessness with which courts convict people and then sentence them to death.
Costco is being criticized... for not abusing its workers the way other companies do. Does it make them look bad?
What's wrong here is the system: the idea that a company has more responsibility to its shareholders than to its workers (or customers) must be rejected, condemned, shredded, and dropped in the garbage.
Everyone is partly selfish; most people recognize responsibilities as well. Those who don't are called psychopaths.
The "handover of power" to the interim Iraqi government is a sham, because it is only the name, not the real power, that has been handed over.
The Bush forces have put outside companies in charge of many ministries in Iraq, so that the "Iraqi" government will have little power. It won't even have command of "its" army. Some of these companies have been given terms of control lasting beyond the proposed election--so even the future "elected" government won't have much control.
The Bush forces have even retained the power to decide who can run
in the coming election.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush occupation Iraq is violating international law in many ways,
including
plundering the country. It reflects a long-standing idea--which
Bush has carried to a new and blatant extreme--that no rules
whatsoever apply to the US government.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bushmen tried hard so to see Iraqi WMDs that eventually they
fooled themselves.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
People often see what they are looking for.
The Dutch parliament voted to take Dutch support away from the EU software patent directive. This has never happened before in the EU, not with any directive. If a few other countries also withdraw their support, software patents in Europe may be defeated in the Council of Ministers.
If we lose in the Council of Ministers, we still get a chance in the European Parliament, which voted against software patents last September.
A Falun Gong practitioner in South Africa was shot in
the car while on the way to a protest about the visit of Chinese
officials.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
Polution of low Earth orbit with fast-moving fragments of old
satellites is dangerous to satellites and spacecraft. The FCC has imposed
new rules to dispose of all satellites in orbits that won't contribute
to space junk.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This is an important, though belated, step. I hope it is not too late. The International Space Station was already struck and damaged at least once by a piece of space junk too small to detect and avoid.
This issue also provides an interesting example of how corporations will poison their own wells for short-term profit. Companies that operate satellites will lose their business entirely if low Earth orbit becomes uninhabitable; but many of them will risk this disaster for the sake of greater profit today. The surest way to destroy any durable asset is to make a corporation its proprietor.
As the US fingerprints most visitors, and Blair in the UK tries to
impose fingerprinting of everyone in the country,
teenagers in South Korea are fighting against the fingerprinting of
everyone there (a system set up back when South Korea was a
dictatorship).
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
This letter, written by a journalist who visited Fallujah during the
height of the fighting there, reports on Bush forces soldiers who hated Iraqis
and wanted only to kill them, indiscriminately.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
These soldiers realized that, as an conquering army, they were regarded as the enemy by nearly the whole population. And they thought of the whole population of Iraq as their enemy.
Drug testing of employees at work is expanding from the US into the
UK, even though there is no evidence that
it improves safety.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
A much better way to ensure safety, without prying into employees' private lives, is to have each employee take a test of alertness on reporting to work. These tests are like video games, and not very hard. If the employee fails the test occasionally, he is not punished, but he gets put on a desk job that day. (Everyone has bad days.)
If an employee fails repeatedly, that is a real problem. The employer needs to investigate why. The cause might be stress, problems at home, sleep disorders, illegal drugs, legal drugs, or other things. Whatever the cause is, maybe something can be done about it; dismissing the employee would be the last resort.
With this system, nobody will be detected, let alone dismissed, except for problems that really affect job performance.
Amnesty International reports a situation
in Chechnya that I'd compare with Iraq. The "authorities" make
people disappear in the night, and torture and kill. Meanwhile, their
enemies sometimes set off bombs that kill passers by. The disappearances
are starting to spread to neighboring Ingushetia.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Supreme Court, in its decisions about detainees, upheld the
authority of courts, but let civil
liberties down. Most disappointing of all was their cop-out
regarding Padilla, sentencing him to Kafkaesque legal proceedings that
can never end.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
I do see one useful aspect to the decision. If detainees can speak with lawyers, they can find out about the world situation, and send out inspirational messages such as "I have been tortured" or "Don't mourne, organize!"
A few months ago I wondered if Bush would turn to Saddam Hussein to
run Iraq. Instead he figured there are more where Saddam came from.
Here's an article on Allawi's
terrorist background, working for Saddam Hussein and the CIA.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The handover of titular authority to an Iraqi is not likely to disguise the continuing occupation. No matter how Allawi tries to distance himself from Bush, he won't be seen by Iraqis as anything but Dubya's man as long as he depends on the Bush forces to keep him in power.
If Allawi does declare martial law, there would be even less freedom
in Iraq than now. Martial law won't affect the armed resistance much,
but it can easily crush newspapers and other democratic forms of
opposition.
Armed resistance will become the only possibility for opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces plan on
conscripting former soldiers
[Reference updated on 2018-08-28 because the old link was broken.]
This won't be enough, and drafting young people is the obvious next
step. Americans have to start organizing now to oppose the draft. If
you work with high school or college students, it would be good to
start raising the issue with them.
The US is still preparing some sort of coup or destabilization in Venezuela.
2% of Iraqis regard the Bush forces as liberators. A larger percentage
support
Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator.
Unfortunately, so is Bush.
Watching TV screens affects melatonin production,
which could lead to sleep difficulties and earlier puberty
British journalist Peter Hounam has been
banned from Israel
after he spoke with Mordechai Vanunu.
Another article, which I don't know a usable URL for, reported that
Hounam was going to testify before the Israeli Supreme Court, which
will be hearing Vanunu's case. This ban is thus a way to exclude
Hounam's testimony without admitting it.
Suspicious connections are coming out
between the perpetrators
of the March bombings in Madrid and the Spanish police.
The second article in Spanish seems to say that the telephone number
in the possession of Carmen Toro did not really belong to Sanchez
Manzano, but rather to a policeman investigating the bombings, who has
made a practice of giving out that false name to informers. But
regardless of whether this phone number on a piece of paper proves
anything, the fact that the police did not use their informers to
prevent the bombings is suspicious.
When Iraqis distrust Bush-style corporate-run democracy,
they are following where Abraham Lincoln led.
Americans, do you want the Bush/Kerry brand of freedom,
or Lincoln's?
Just as Bush was boasting that 2003 showed a decrease in terrorism,
the State Department had to admit that
the figures were wrong.
The UN, the EU, Russia and the US endorsed Sharon's document that
declares that peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine are
impossible.
Sharon's claim is that the Palestinian Authority is not sincere about
aiming for peace. However, Israeli intelligence has verified that the
claim is and was false.
More troops and aid are needed to maintain safety for the
elections in Afghanistan.
Bangladesh has accused the leaders of an anti-poverty organization
with trying to overthrow the government. What was the alleged plot?
A large protest rally.
The Bangladesh government apparently regards political criticism as a
crime. It isn't the first time. Author Taslima Nasrin was prosecuted
for her books, which describe the mistreatment of the Hindu minority.
A CIA contractor is
facing charges for killing a prisoner in Afghanistan.
Back-pressure like this is essential, but if we are to end the torture
and killing of prisoners, we must also eliminate the pressure for
abuse, pressure that comes straight from the top.
A military judge ruled that an accused torture-soldier's lawyers can
question the generals in charge of the Bush forces in Iraq.
South Korea's government plans to
go ahead with sending 3,000 more
troops to Iraq, despite the threat to kill a South Korean hostage.
The government is right in refusing to withdraw troops because of a
threat of violence. The right reason to withdraw South Korean troops
from Iraq is that the invasion was a war of aggression, and Bush does
not deserve their support. Koreans recognize this; when their
government does not, it shows its true colors--it represents Bush, not
the Korean people.
The British occupation of Iraq in 1917-1920 followed
a course that holds lessons about the occupation today.
I read that the British troops fighting in Iraq in 1916 found that
flies caused them lots of trouble. Too bad they didn't think of
declaring Iraq a "no fly" zone.
A bipartisan group of US diplomats and generals have condemned
the Bush administration.
I take issue with one sentence in this statement: "No loyal American
would question our ultimate right to act alone in our national
interest." If this were limited specifically to defense against a
real attack, I would agree; but the statement as made is too broad and
not correct. There are forms of action, such as invading another
country, which require more justification than mere "national
interest".
The FBI
tried to subpoena reporter Declan McCullagh's notes
by calling him an internet service provider--and tried to gag
him about it, too.
NAFTA is destroying US environmental regulations.
The
Church of Scientology's drug-treatment activity is
running into trouble in California, because of pseudoscience
that probably comes from Scientology dogma.
Israeli air and ground forces are carrying out continuous attacks
against...olive trees.
2% of Iraqis regard the Bush forces as liberators. A larger
percentage (though not many) support Saddam Hussein.
Civil wars
threaten the lives of civilians in many countries.
The Department of Homeland Security is working hard to keep America
safe from...immigrants who have smoked pot.
I have a few comments. First, note how they use the letter of the law
as an excuse to crush individuals in despite of the spirit of the law.
Second, if there is another terrorist attack, the FBI and DHS will
have worse things to answer for than misdirection of resources. The
persistent refusal to investigate certain people, both before and
after 9/11, is directly responsible. Sibel Edmonds is trying to tell
us more.
When did higher-ups in the Bush forces know about torture in Iraq? A
November 2003 Army report detailed many abuses of prisoners.
Paul Bremmer was informed in November 2003 (if not before).
This article shows that torture practices were public knowledge
in 2002.
Standing on the street, I saw a man walk by. As he walked away, I saw
the sticker on his backpack: "Non-polluting vehicle." Seconds too
late, I thought of responding to it: "No shit?"
Everyone who lives produces waste products, but some ways of living
produce more than others. The US way of life produces the most of
all, and uses the most resources of all.
Former Israeli soldiers who guarded settlers in the midst of the
Palestinian city of Hebron have
mounted an exhibit of the photos that show what the occupation is
like.
Organizers of the show who were questioned by the police say the
police are trying to intimidate them, not trying to punish or
prevent abuses against Palestinians.
Scholars are trying to analyze the writing of the Koran, as they have
analyzed the writing of the Jewish and Christian Bible, but they face the
threat of suppression from governments of Islamic countries. It is
not unusual for those who criticize Islam, even without opposing it,
to be persecuted.
People should have a right to choose their religious beliefs, but
respecting people's right to believe in a religion does not entail
respecting the beliefs themselves. Nobody's beliefs are beyond
criticism. Islamic attempts to suppress the human rights of critics
or scholars should be condemned utterly.
Fahrenheit 911 is
hardly available in some Republican areas of the US; reportedly
the concentration of the cinema business plays a role in this.
The corporate media exert control at many levels over what
ideas are expressed to the public in the US.
Attributed to the operator of oilempire.us:
The 2004 "election" features a plutocrat from the occult Skull and
Bones secret society who supports police state legislation, a new gas
pipeline from north Alaska, more troops to Iraq, the war in Columbia,
nuclear power, delaying fuel efficiency improvements in cars until
2015 and opposes the Kyoto Treaty. And then we have the incumbent...
Bush's policy on torture and the Geneva Conventions has a
precedent.
It's easy to say "Torture is justified because our country's survival
is at stake." It's easy to say, because the people who say it are
never called upon to prove it is true. They simply say it, and that's
sufficient. This talk is as cheap, for the Bush administration, as
Iraqi or American lives.
The Bush-appointed government in Iraq is asking for NATO training,
since it cannot get NATO troops. NATO should resist this form
of slippery inclusion in the occupation.
Biden accused Bush of creating a "security vacuum" by pulling back
Bush forces troops. What he's referring to is an attempt to "Iraqize"
the fighting so as to reduce the casualties among the occupiers.
In Vietnam, "Vietnamization" was the path that led to US withdrawal
from the quagmire. Bush has lost the battle for Iraqis' hearts and
minds, so only a permanent occupation force can keep the imposed
government in place. Perhaps "Iraqization" will provide a face-saving
way to withdraw the Bush forces from Iraq, and let the inevitable
defeat occur.
When the Bush administration decided to attack Iraq, it
treated the danger of terrorism as secondary to maintainance of
imperial control. This is part of a larger pattern of priorities,
lasting for decades, and illuminated here by Noam Chomsky.
Al-Qaeda's Thumbs Up
for Bush
Bush has backed down from his attempt to bully the UN into
giving US soldiers immunity from war crimes prosecution in the
International Criminal Court.
Bush likes to say that the US will prosecute anyone responsible for
war crimes. This list now includes Bush himself, since he signed a
document saying he can authorize torture.
We will see if he is prosecuted in the US; if not, will the ICC get a
chance at him?
Judge Bybee, who tried to excuse torture by redefining the word, ought
to be impeached.
In May, Police in Providence, Rhode Island, harassed activist Peter
Zendran,
arrested him for no reason, lied to him, then imprisoned him
in unhealthy conditions.
The fabricated charges were dropped in June by the court.
A
leading Russian anti-Nazi campaigner was murdered, as the
Nazi movement there grows.
Police in many countries have a pattern of disregarding violence
committed by Nazi gangs, even up to the level of murder, unless
it attracts public attention that forces them to crack down.
Houses used for making methamphetamine become toxic sites. This is
yet another aspect of the harm done by the war on drugs.
The UK is planning a stem-cell research complex,
which will do the medical research that Christian fanatics won't let the US
support.
If these fanatics would rather die to protect embryos' cells, I would
say "Go ahead, if you are really sure." But they want you and me to
die for embryos too.
The
economic statistics of NAFTA, demonstrating how much
it has harmed most Americans, Mexicans, and Canadians.
The same text as a nicely printable handout.
The result is that 1/5 of the children in the US are growing
up in poverty, and many Americans don't get enough to eat.
More US teenagers smoke pot than tobacco. In ten years, tobacco use
rates have gone down a lot, while pot use has gone up a little.
Since tobacco is addictive and marijuana basically isn't, the shift is
a good thing in itself. More, it also shows that legalizing a drug
and regulating it can be a better method of discouraging its use by
teenagers than prohibition. It is neither wise nor just to impose
the harsher prohibitions on the less dangerous drug.
Vote spoilage in US elections is targeted at blacks.
The 9/11 investigation affirmed the
absence of a connection
between Saddam Hussein and Al Qa'ida.
But Bush continues to defend those falsehoods--now by exaggerating
"contacts" into "cooperation".
The US had contacts with the Soviet Union all through the cold war:
the two countries had diplomatic relations the whole time, and
starting in the 1960s there was a direct telephone line between their
leaders (the famous "hot line"). It is clear that "contacts" between
two organizations are not enough to conclude that both are responsible
for whatever one of them does.
This latest Bush nonsense illustrates a general pattern in the
behavior of today's antidemocratic rulers of ostensibly democratic
countries: never admit a mistake, no matter how obvious it becomes.
They figure that the right-wing mass media will support their lie, no
matter how threadbare it becomes, and maybe they will fool enough
people (or enough voting machines) to get elected anyway.
After a bomb killed Bush contract workers, some of whom were working
on restoring electric supply, Iraqis cheered. Iraqis want their
electricity supplies restored, but their anger at the Bush forces
seems to be a stronger feeling.
Meanhwhile, the interim president and the Bush forces are
disagreeing
about who gets to set up shop in one of Saddam's large palaces.
Rumsfeld
directly ordered the Bush forces in Iraq to conceal a
prisoner from the ICRC, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Bush plans to violate them further, by holding thousands of prisoners
without charges even after the war is officially over.
General Karpinski says her successor in charge of prisoners in Iraq,
General Miller, said that
the prisoners had no more rights than a dog.
The AMA opposed the FDA by endorsing nonprescription distribution of
emergency contraceptives (the three-mornings-later pill).
Israeli forces routinely torture Palestinians; a Supreme Court
decision that this is illegal it is more or less disregarded.
The policy is based on the dubious assumption that it
prevents terrorist attacks, but we know that is rarely possible.
Cory Doctorow
spoke at Microsoft Research, trying to convince
Microsoft to reject the idea of DRM.
While I think this speech is very well put, and I hope it convinces
poeple, I also think it concedes certain points that we should not
concede. It is an outrage to stop the public from copying and sharing
published works, and that's why DRM is wrong.
Joke seen on the net:
The U.S. Postal Service created a stamp earlier this year with a
picture of President Bush to honor his achievements while in office.
However, it was found that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes.
So the President established a blue ribbon commission to determine the
reason for the defect.
After thorough testing, the commission published the following findings:
1. The stamp was found to be in perfect order.
2. There was nothing wrong with the adhesive.
3. People were just spitting on the wrong side.
Neoliberal economic policies in Mexico have reduced
wages, while poverty and inequality have increased.
An Israeli/Palestinian joint protest stopped the wall
construction, at least for a time.
Invading Iraq
undermined the fight against terrorism in three ways,
says Richard Clarke. And that's not counting the way it encourages Al
Qa'ida recruitment.
A seriously ill woman in Montana
tried to kill herself because she
couldn't get the only drug that relieves the pain of her illness:
marijuana. She was "saved", and now the state proposes to subject her
to a year of pain in prison.
If I were in that situation, I'd consider it rational to make sure to
kill myself rather than be imprisoned. I won't claim I have the
courage to go through with this--it has not been tested yet--but this
is what I hope I'd do.
The Institute for Food and Development Policy works against the
political and social systems that cause hunger.
I disagree with their view on one sub-issue: population growth contributes
to hunger and many other world problems (global warming, extinction of
species, and resource exhaustion), so it deserves a strong focus.
However, this doesn't reduce the importance of the Institute's own work.
Warning from US intelligence: Al Qa'ida may attack before the
election...to keep Bush in power.
There would be precedent for such a thing. In 1980, the Iranian
hostage-takers made a deal with Reagan to prevent Carter from getting
the hostages back, so that Reagan would win the election. US leaders
who talk tough, such as Reagan and Bush, often do this to distract
attention from the "man behind the curtain". Even America's real
enemies may recognize this.
Senator Hatch is
planning to ban file trading software--along with
VCRs, tape recorder, computers, and many other things. All in the name
of the War on Copying.
The long-predicted big jump in oil prices
seems to be starting to arrive.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
is
campaigning against laws like the USA PAT RIOT act.
British journalist Elena Lappin was arrested and deported in Los
Angeles because she did not have a special journalist's visa. She was
kept overnight in a cell
designed for sleep deprivation and
humiliation, in the spirit of Abu Ghraib.
The fact that prisoners are abused in this way even when they
have nothing to do with any planned crime, when they are not
even going to be interrogated, shows that cruelty has become
a way of life which does not require any reason.
Government lawyers who sought to legitimize torture are criticized by
many legal scholars. One says they should face "professional
sanctions", which could mean disbarment. I hope so.
The UN resolution that authorized the occupation of Iraq
extended the immunity of Bush forces soldiers from war
crimes prosecution
[Reference updated on 2018-05-06 because the old link was broken.]
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More recently I've heard that Bush want the Iraqi interim government to extend this immunity to contractors as well. Given that the Justice Department doesn't even bother asking for FBI investigations of crimes against humanity committed by contract torturers, this would mean they can get away with murder.
One good point in the UN resolution is that the interim government cannot make binding decisions that it would impose on a subsequent elected government. In that way, at least, the UN resisted handing Bush all of Iraq's oil. However, it remains to be seen whether "democratic elections" are limited to candidates that approve of the occupation, and therefore can't survive except as puppets of Bush.
Kurdish former MPs, who were imprisoned in Turkey for supporting rights for the Kurds, have now been freed--but the decision is not necessarily final.
The G8 summit's fascist security
precautions have taught the people of St Simon Island what Bush
really means.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
This article gives arguments and evidence that the fires in the World
Trade Center were not
capable of causing the collapse.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I am not knowledgeable enough to judge the validity of these arguments, but if the 9/11 investigation does not consider them carefully, it is bogus.
Nonviolent protests against the annexation wall continue, but Israeli forces are using new chemical weapons that knock people out.
Ken Okeefe, a nonviolent peace activist, was arrested trying to enter
Gaza to discuss
peace campaigns with Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
If Israel would like Palestinians to stop using violence, it should stop crushing nonviolent resistance with force.
Noam
Chomsky on Reagan's Legacy: Bush Has Resurrected "The Most
Extremist, Arrogant, Violent and Dangerous Elements" of Reagan's White
House.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Australian government paid no attention as Jack Roche repeatedly
offered to
become an informer in Al Qa'ida. After the 9/11 attacks, they
started listening, but only to punish him--not to accept his help in
catching anyone else.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
This was stupid, since anyone would have to be crazy to try to inform on Al Qa'ida now. Worse, it was unjust, since Roche did not commit any acts of terrorism and mainly tried to prevent them.
Women with drug problems or mental problems often end up in prison, which has the effect of causing suffering, but does not solve the problem. This article describes the UK, but I am pretty sure it is true in the US as well.
Sibel Edmonds, gagged FBI translator, says that there is an underground
organization that infiltrates the FBI, which her superiors
apparently know about and do not care to investigate.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
In and around Britain, species are moving north at up to 50km/year.
Some are moving
towards eventual extinction at the northern end of the island.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Ronald Reagan launched the modern period of corporate rule. Here's a
list of
his harmful achievements, some of which I did not know about, and
some I did not know he did.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Behind the smokescreen: tightening grip over the West Bank.
Bush has a pattern of talking about how much he supports something--then cutting its budget. This includes soldiers and veterans.
However, one statement in that article is a fundamental mistake. Budgets are the guts of government. "Who benefits?" and "who pays?" are the only serious questions.
Politics deals with others far more important than those two. Who is killed, and is it justified? What freedom do you have? Those are more important than "Who pays".
More of
Reagan's casty career.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
But the worst thing Reagan did was to sell America and the world a lie: that giving more power and a bigger share of society's production to the rich would increase growth and make everyone better off. "It's counterintuitive, but economics proves it's true", said Reaganomics.
Well, we tried it, and found that it was indeed voodoo economics. Reagan's predictions were Baloney. Reaganomics did lead to growth, but the rich kept all the increase for themselves, so there was no benefit for anyone else. Most Americans were no better off in the 90s than in 1980, and the poorest 20% became poorer. I have not seen figures lately, but I am sure that now it is even worse.
Bush administration
arguments for the legitimacy of torture contradict Bush
administration arguments in Supreme Court cases.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Hemp activists overcame the dirty tricks of the OSU administration to hold the largest Hemp Fest ever.
A phony abortion clinic, whose practice is to string women along till it is too late for them to get abortions, has been sued on behalf of its victims.
David Kay called Tony Blair "delusional" for continuing to pretend that Saddam's fictitious weapons of mass distruction will be found.
I disagree--I think Bliar is just an extremely stubborn liar. He figures that as long as he never admits doing anything wrong, he may get lucky and never get blamed for what he has done.
Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
The RIAA wants your fingerprints.
The only response is--DRM is theft!
MIT police arrested an activist who was handing out
leaflets on the street to people on their way to graduation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Merely arresting one person, and forcing three others to stop leafletting, is small compared with other police outrages. It is noteworthy because it was carried out by a university and because there was not even a shred of an excuse.
Foreign nurses and doctors in Libya have been sentenced to death for maliciously infecting children with HIV. An independent report said that the infections were the result of careless medical techniques.
There was no specific evidence against these accused except confessions that were tortured out of them. When the US criticized the use of torture, Libya responded, "Who are you to talk?"
The Bush regime published detailed accusations against Jose Padilla. If these accusations are true, they would be grounds to put him on trial. However, merely saying so is not grounds to imprison him without trial.
Without a trial we have no basis to assume these accusations are any more justified than the ones against Brandon Mayberry--and we know that the government will stick to false charges for years, merely to avoid admitting a mistake.
The Bush forces made a truce with al Sadr's forces, and agreed that
What the "war
on terror" really means.
The already rather conservative public radio and TV in the US are
under direct pressure from Bush
to become more conservative.
Israelis and Palestinians are now
protesting the wall in A-ram, effectively a suburb of Jerusalem
that will be cut off from it.
A review of the
career of Ronald Reagan.
How Reagan's campaign dealt with Iran,
to prevent President Carter from bringing back the hostages.
For this, and for later selling missiles to terrorists who were
kidnaping Americans, Reagan should have been tried for treason.
However, I won't go so far as to say "good riddance" because he has
died. I prefer to say, as Chicago Mayoral Candidate Washington said
of former Chicago Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad
he's gone." I just wish Reagan's policies were gone too.
When Reagan announced the doctor had told him he it he would be awake
and alert during his operation, I immediately thought of the old joke:
"Doc, will I be able to play the piano after this operation?"
Searing Uncertainty for
Iraqis Missing Loved Ones.
The ACLU is
suing to challenge the USA PAT RIOT act, specifically its
provisions for secret collection of information about individuals
without even a court order. The Bush regime tried to use the PAT RIOT
act to keep the case secretx.
Dubya's general policy is that the public should be kept out of all
important political decisions--the exact opposite of the spirit
of democracy.
The United Nations' top human rights official said that mistreatment
of prisoners by the Bush forces soldiers
could amount to war crimes.
However, if we evaluate the Bush regime by the standards of the
Nuremberg trials, it goes
further than that.
Granada is still holding political prisoners captured in the US
invasion of Granada, and given unfair trials paid for by the US
government.
This was before the US government got the idea of imprisoning
people with no trial.
Gerry Adams, now a member of the UK parliament, describes how he was
beaten and threatened, by police and soldiers, when he was arrested in
the 70s-- as part
of a systematic practice, surely authorized from above.
There were real terrorists and murderers in the IRA, and not all of
them were secretly working for the British government. However, this
cannot excuse a descent into torture.
I have never supported independence for Northern Ireland, which would
probably lead to making it part of the Irish Repbublic. I support the
majority there who do not want to be under the power of a government
that almost completely prohibits divorce and abortion. However, I do
not think the question of supporting or opposing the IRA's goals is
relevant to the question at hand.
The proposed UN resolution would call for the Bush forces to exit Iraq
by 2006. However, Iraqis want them
to leave now.
Bush says no one should "bet against" freedom in Iraq. That's because
he doesn't want you to make a bet you might win. The chances for
freedom in Iraq are small if the Bush forces leave, and zero while
they remain.
The FBI is
continuing to push a criminal case against art professor Steve
Kurtz, and has issued subpoenas to several other artist-dissidents
that work with him.
This could be a deliberate campaign to crush dissidents, and never mind
distorting the facts. The Bush administration has done that before
(look at the cases against Greenpeace and the animal rights
webmasters).
This could also be a mere mistake, followed by culpable unwillingness
to admit making a mistake. That behavior pattern is common among
governments, but the Bush regime takes it further than most.
The Prime Minister of Turkey (a long-time ally of Israel) has accused Israel
of practicing state-sponsored terrorism, equating the murder
practices of Israelis with those of Palestinians.
At the same time, he has clearly rejecting antisemitism,
which will make it harder for those who try to misrepresent
criticism of Israeli policies as antisemitism.
15 years after the massacres at Tien An Men square,
repression in China is becoming stricter, despite economic growth.
Businessmen looking for an excuse to avoid trade sanctions and do
business with a nasty regime like to argue that foreign trade brings freedom.
Clearly this cannot be relied on. China's economic growth
is due in no small measure to the fact that the US government has
ceased to pressure China on human rights. Since Clinton, the US
government's priority in dealing with China has nothing to do with
human rights; it is copyright enforcement, which mainly means more
income for a few corporations.
"Tien An Men" means gate of heavenly peace. Although the name is much
older than the massacre, it has become in effect a lie worthy of Bush himself.
To avoid repeating the lie, we can call it "Sha Xuesheng
Men", which means kill-students (The "x" is pronounced like
English sh, except with the tip of the tongue parallel to the top of
the mouth. The "sh" is pronounced like English sh, but with the
tongue curled a little back in the mouth.)
The
CIA's KUBARK interrogation manual--obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act.
The Bush campaign is trying to involve churches,
violating election laws and separation of church and state.
British American Tobacco is accused of planning to add sweet additives
to cigarettes as a
scheme to get children to smoke.
Whether or not these sweet additives would really increase smoking,
this shows how closely we need to keep watching the tobacco companies.
How the Bush administration persistently imposed its torture policies,
against objections at various levels.
A Parable for
Understanding 9/11
The World Bank supports oil development, supposedly to reduce poverty,
but a new study reports that the benefit
mainly goes to Halliburton.
Mexican police arrested protestors at a summit in Guadalajara, then beat
some of them, stripping others nude.
I wonder if the Mexican police learned some of these techniques from
Bush at the summit.
Bushido: the way
of the armchair warrior.
4 of Bush's Iraqi prison administrators have backgrounds of abusing
prisoners in their careers in state prisons in the US.
The abuse of prisoners in state prisons is no more a matter of a few
"bad apples" than the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. It results from the
general climate of "make them miserable, but never, ever help them"
that has nearly eliminated rehabilitation programs in prisons in the
US.
A Palestinian woman who was imprisoned in Israel says that
women prisoners are often raped, and photographs are used to
blackmail them afterards. (They could be killed by their families for
having been raped.)
When the Bush forces rape prisoners in Iraq, they are simply following
their teacher's example.
I've seen reports claiming that the photographs of men who were forced
to play kinky sex scenes are also meant for blackmailing them later.
The aspect of Arab culture that condemns women who have been raped (or
had love affairs) is entirely unforgiveable. Now this injustice makes
Arabs vulnerable to rape-blackmail tactics. I hope Iraqis will learn
to reject this injustice in their hearts, because they can no longer
afford the vulnerability.
Be that as it may, the facility of blackmailing Arab rape victims is
hardly an excuse for raping them.
The government of Ireland accepted
various corporations as "sponsors" for its term as president of
the European Union. They might as well hang out a sign, "Government
for sale to the highest bidder".
One of these sponsors was Microsoft. People suspect the Irish
government's attempt to ram through software idea patents without a
vote represents what Microsoft purchased with its money.
The
Marijuana Policy Project won a court ruling overturning the law
that banned federally supported transit systems from running paid
advertisements for legalization of marijuana.
After Arthur Andersen gave money to the Bush campaign, Bush let the
company move to Bermuda to avoid US taxes, and now gave
it a big contract.
The Iraqi governing council forced Bremer and Bush to accept a
president who has
criticized the Bush forces. He has asked the UN to give the Iraqi
government real sovereignty.
However, full sovereignty for the Iraqi government while Iraq is
occupied by the Bush forces is a recipe for Bush and Cheney to impose
"irrevocable" privatization deals, in effect stealing from Iraq for
the benefit of Halliburton etc. The Iraqi government should be a
caretaker, all of whose actions can be revoked by a government elected
after the end of the occupation.
When civilians in Iraq torture prisoners, the Justice Department is
supposed to tell the FBI to investigate.
But it has not done so--not even once.
Refuting the arguments for torture.
Robert Fisk: The
re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed.
Global warming is
causing rapid changes in the Arctic, affecting plants, animals and
people.
The Sudanese government continues
to support a campaign of violence against non-Muslims.
How did we get torture in Guantanamo? In October 2002, General Baccus,
who was in charge, was apparently
removed for being "too nice" to the prisoners. He was
scrupulously observing the requirements of the Geneva Convention.
Here's the article referred to, which criticized General Baccus for
being "too nice".
Note also how that article asserts that prisoners are there because of "actions"
of theirs--true perhaps for some, but false as we know in many cases.
The
A-to-Z of lies about Iraq.
The US major media are
applying a pronounced double standard to Bush and Kerry.
This isn't the first time--we saw it in action against Clinton too.
I find it peculiar that they should bother to do this against Kerry,
who is so close to Bush on most political issues (other than those
of right-wing Christian fundamentalist bigotry). It can't be a matter
of corporate domination, since both candidates support that. It could
be a matter of making sure their reporters are invited to White House
press conferences, but while I believe they would be nice to Bush for
that, I don't see why they would attack Kerry over that.
Can anyone figure out the mechanism behind this?
The Bush forces arrested an entire Iraqi town--well, only the males--
then came
back to destroy houses, as collective punishment.
Monsanto won part of its case in Canada against farmer Percy
Schmeiser, whose crop was polluted by Monsanto's artificial genes. But
this part may be enough for Monsanto's legal squad to terrorize
family farmers. Schmeiser doesn't have to pay damages, but the
seed lines he has saved for 50 years are ruined--and so is his
business.
Retired Staff Sargent Massey
talks about killing Iraqi civilians, including fleeing refugees and
peaceful protestors. He asks other soldiers who have retired from
the Bush forces to speak up and acknowledge what they all participated
in, so they can begin to heal, and so they can inform the public in
the US.
Too bad Colin Powell didn't do this after his Vietnam experience.
A US soldier says he was beaten in Guantanamo while playing prisoner
in a training session. He was
permanently injured and discharged as a result.
An added cruelty of imprisonment in the US: making the prisoners
pay for their loss of freedom.
Measures like these are a response to the high cost of imprisoning so
many Americans (a larger fraction of the population than in any other
country). Instead of making prisons cheaper to run, or squeezing money
out of prisoners' families. The solution is to stop imprisoning
people for unjust reasons--as in the War on Drugs and the War on
Copying.
Reeling from digital photos of torture activities, the Pentagon is trying
to stop soldiers from...having digital cameras.
Mohammad Mahjoub, who fled Egypt to Canada, explained how
his captors in Egypt tortured him.
Mahjoub was arrested in Canada in 2000 based on secret evidence and
has been imprisoned for four years without charges. Now Canada seeks
to deport him to Egypt, presumably so he will be tortured again.
At least in Canada he is getting a court hearing before he is deported.
Bush would send him there without a hearing, and call it "rendition".
British reporter Tara Sutton, after several visits to Fallujah,
reports on how the Bush forces built
up the hatred that spilled forth on March 31--and their
indiscriminate bombardment of civilians afterwards.
US troops were given permission to mistreat Afghan prisoners.
War Crimes: Was Afghanistan Worse?
The Bush forces are investigating reports that
soldiers have stolen from Iraqi civilians
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
It is proper to investigate, but theft by patrolling soldiers seems to
be a standard practice, and hardly ever will there be any evidence
except the testimony of the civilians in question. The word of a few
Iraqis will surely not be enough to convict a soldier.
The only way to prevent such theft was with a different attitude,
starting from the commanders and going all the way down.
In total,
there are now 91 investigations into "misconduct" of varying
degrees. However, unless these investigations and subsequent trials
are independent, they will tend to whitewash the offenses.
A court in Israel, before the reintroduction of torture for the
current intifadah, said: "The methods of
interrogation which are employed in any given regime are a faithful
mirror of the character of the entire regime."
Penology also offers
lessons about US torture practices.
Australian Mamdouh Habib was tortured in Guantanamo
prison for three months, according to his former cellmate.
How did soldiers in Guantanamo learn torture?
Uri Avnery: The strange creature named the Busharon is in serious trouble.
Amnesty International
accuses Israel of war crimes.
Scientific polls show that
most Iraqis want the Bush forces to leave immediately, but most US
journalists pretend it isn't so.
AP counts 1,361
Iraqis killed during April by the Bush forces.
One Bush forces helicopter pilot made a video of shooting a
wounded Iraqi.
Human rights groups report that Israel imprisons
and abuses Palestinian youths.
Evidence that the Bush
forces tortured Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel to death.
Manadel al-Jamadi was killed, then his body was kept for 3 months,
making an autopsy impossible. (This is a standard cover-up practice.)
His family was apparently
never told of his death.
Sadiq Zoman was merely
tortured into a permanent coma.
Prisoners released from Abu Ghraib prison report they were
beaten, injured, and saw another prisoner killed.
Cameraman Badraddin Baz survived two months of torture to
report.
The Bush forces also moved prisoners around so as to
hide them from the International Red Cross. (The practice of
moving prisoners for ulterior reasons is also reported in the US
federal prison system.)
"The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good
thing."
Clinton and Bush have allowed companies to ignore a law
limiting concentration of ownership in oil leasing. They have also
found ways to get around the law and make a mockery of it.
But when a company wants a law enforced, then our guardians of public
order become more energetic. (See the recent note about charging the
operators of an animal rights web site as "terrorists".)
A former CIA analyst urges Americans to be skeptical of
warnings of terrorist attacks based on so-called "credible
intelligence".
The torture practices used on prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba,
etc., were the result of CIA research which the CIA taught
to police and military in various undemocratic governments around the
world.
Let's not forget that many prisoners have been tortured
physically--beaten, raped, and even murdered.
Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower that Ashcroft has gagged, says the
current 9/11 investigation is inadequate. People tied to the 9/11
attacks were allowed to leave the US months after the attacks, while
hundreds of people arrested for hardly any reason languished in prison
without lawyers.
I have to wonder if the arrests of so many suspects in late 2001
were meant only as a distraction.
Opponents Predict Defeat for
CAFTA. Let's hope so!
The Bush forces reached a deal
with al Sadr; both to withdraw from Najaf.
This sudden reasonableness on the part of Bush is a step in the right
direction--a step towards ending the occupation of Iraq--but it
probably intended as a way to avoid taking any further steps.
Reducing the level of oppression in Iraq to the level as of February
will not make the occupation any more legitimate than it was in February.
Later news says that skirmishes in Kufa, near Najaf, are making it
uncertain that the deal will be carried out.
Bush has privatized
the data base of US government contracts, making it secret. This
facilitates corruption.
The Freedom of Information Act must be amended to include
all data maintained by companies on behalf of the government.
We must establish a principle that how a data base is maintained
has no effect on the public's right of access to it.
Enron traders
bragged about deception, and about "stealing" from California.
Using mercenaries to do soldiers' jobs not only hide casualties
from public view. It also encourages corruption and makes logistics
unreliable. If the US ever has a legitimate reason to fight a war,
that will hurt.
They also indirectly induce professional soldiers to leave the army,
cutting into its ranks. Of course, there is a plan for solving this
problem: the draft.
The activists that McDonald's sued for libel in the UK are now
taking the UK's libel laws to court.
Thousands of Italian
doctors were bribed by Glaxo to prescribe its products.
This is one example of a much broader web of big pharma
corruption which reaches into medical journals and scientific
research.
For almost 4 decades, Colin Powell
has made a career of killing civilians in wartime, and covering it
up. It started in Vietnam. Later he was involved in covering up
Reagan's arms sales to Iranian terrorists--and in arming Iraq at the
same time (while the two countries were at war).
Wasserman: Will
Bush Become America's Pinochet?
The Boston subways
plan to check ID of some passengers--supposedly to
as a security measure, but I suspect it is only effective for making
people feel watched. The article does not say what they will do to
passengers who do not have identification, but it makes me feel like
leaving mine behind.
Remember the hardship and fear caused by the forced cancellation of
various transatlantic flights last December, based on supposed
intelligence reports of a terrorist threat?
This article reports that Ridge already knew on December 23 that these
reports were false, but insisted on the cancellations anyway.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had a government honest enough that we
could trust it when it warns us?
Israeli tanks
killed peaceful protestors in Gaza a week ago. Israel
claims that the massacred protestors were armed and that they were
killed by warning shots. However, independent reports say this is
untrue.
The Bush forces are
taking hostages in Iraq: arresting relatives
of the people they really want to capture.
Remember how angry we were when Arabs were taking Americans hostage,
and how we condemned that? It is just as wrong when Americans do it.
A witness who told about torture in Abu Ghraib prison is being
punished for telling.
It's very bad when grandma marries a crook, but it is even worse when
she divorces the crook.
Albert Einstein published an essay in 1949 which clearly explains the
problems of Capitalism today--except that they have now become more
extreme.
The essay also recognizes the problems of Communism, as it then
existed.
Halliburton is charging the US government lots of money for
driving empty trucks back and forth in Iraq.
If you look at this with a nationalistic perspective, it might look
like cheating the government. But when you recognize that, under the
Bush/Cheney administration, the government's prime purpose is to feed
Halliburton, it is perfectly natural.
There are also accusastions that Halliburton staff
demand kickbacks from subcontractors.
Looked at narrowly, that might be an isolated case of corruption. But
just as Bush set the tone for soldiers around the world to torture
prisoners, Cheney set the tone for staff at Halliburton to cheat.
Specific evidence ties some kinds of torture in Iraq to
orders from certain generals.
When General Miller speaks of "setting the condition", those
vague words refer to specific acts of torture.
Bush was kept up to date about the torture accusations all along,
says Powell. (They started over a year ago.)
There are now 37 investigations of deaths of prisoners. But even when
these investigations conclude "it was murder" the killers get a slap
on the wrist.
Here's a report, attributed to DOD whistleblowers, of a
failed CIA
plan to plant weapons of mass distruction in Iraq, as well as steal
Saddam Hussein's riches.
I would not say I'm convinced this is true. Can anyone send
me more information, or confirmation?
The Bush regime has
arrested animal rights activists
and accused them of "terrorism"--for running a web site.
I do not agree with the animal rights movement; I eat meat, and I
strongly support medical research using animals. But when the
political rights of that movement are threatened, my rights and your
rights are threatened as well. Bush is the enemy of democracy, and he
has
attacked other protestors as well.
An
Israeli revenge raid made hundreds more people homeless in Gaza,
and there is now opposition in the Israeli cabinet.
Bush forces soldiers' testimony about an Iraqi killed during
interrogation, apparently by beating him on the head.
Bush still boasts of giving Iraq "an independent judiciary". But if
these Iraqi judges cannot free the Iraqis arrested as hostages
by the Bush forces,
what good are they?
Al Gore gave a speech holding Dubya directly responsible for the
torture and murder of prisoners in Iraq, for the increased danger of
terrorism due to the occupation of Iraq, for dealing with Chalabi, for
lying to start the war, and for seeking the goal of US domination of
the world.
The only part of the speech I did not like was the part that supports
Kerry. With his military background, I suppose Kerry won't tolerate
torturing prisoners, but he his general policy is to be even more
militaristic than Bush.
I was just in Ireland and picked up the book Stakeknife, which
describes the murderous activities of British Army agents in Northern
Ireland. The information comes from one of the soldiers in the
intelligence unit that ran the agents, who later turned whistleblower.
They had agents at high levels in both the IRA and the unionists, and
on both sides they were involved in killing. There were so many
agents that sometimes killings took place in which all the
participants were government agents. When government agent Nelson in
the UDF chose as his next target government agent Stakeknife in the
IRA, the army recommended another Catholic (this one not politically
active) to kill instead.
The murders took place in the 80s and early 90s, under the Tories, but
the Blair government made these crimes its own by trying to cover them
up. In 2000 a newspaper, the People, started to get at the story; its
editor was given two secret injunctions: one not to publish anything
about the security forces, and the other not to talk about the
injunctions.
Murders or no murders, secret censorship is tyrants' work, and
everyone involved in the issuance of such injunctions should have to
resign. I am not sure whether they would have required Blair's direct
authorization; perhaps people more familiar with the inside of the UK
government could tell me the answer to that.
Some US clothing retail companies are releasing reports about how
their products are made, as part of a campaign to
reduce sweatshop practices.
Was the video of the beheading of Nicholas Berg a fake?
When artist Steve Kurtz's wife died, the FBI arrested Kurtz, and seized
his computers, his equipment, and his wife's dead body as
"bioterrorism supplies".
The Bush/Blair draft UN resolution provides for a perpetual
occupation of Iraq. The supposedly-sovereign Iraqi government will
not be allowed to tell the occupying forces to leave.
This proposal is a recipe for perpetual occupation and resistance.
However, if the new Iraqi government has full sovereignty while the
occupation continues, that creates another danger: that it could make
irrevocable "agreements" with Bush about the oil or privatization,
which (supposedly) a future Iraqi government could not revoke.
Bush hopes that the Iraqi puppet government will help impose US-style
corporate-controlled trade, and the privatization that impoverishes.
Many of the US-imposed trade-restriction agreements require
software idea patents (see softwarepatents.co.uk for why they
are so dangerous to computer use).
Some in Washington are now trying to say that
Iran manipulated Bush into attacking Iraq, through Chalabi.
I don't know whether Chalabi was working with Iran. If he was, then
had the conquest of Iraq gone smoothly, Bush would probably have
excused or even praised those contacts as having helped. As it is,
they are the excuse to make Chalabi a scapegoat.
Chalabi is an opportunist, but the idea that he or anyone manipulated
an unwilling Bush into grabbing Iraq is absurd--like Dennis the Menace
claiming he was manipulated into reaching for the cookie jar. Chalabi
was useful to Bush because he said what Bush wanted to hear.
The pressure for voter-verified paper ballots is increasing in the US.
It looks like Bush has forced Jamaica to recognize the death squad
government of Haiti and expel Aristide
to South Africa. Meanwhile, Bush opposes an international
investigation of what occurred in Haiti.
Visiting Lori
Berenson
I've heard that some of the political prisoners in Peru were freed
after they got new trials, but it seems that not all the retrials are
truly independent of the previous kangaroo courts.
Book review:
The New Pearl Harbor
The Bush forces have held a New Zealander prisoner in Iraq for months,
fo r
no known reason, and did not give the NZ government any
information.
The Swedish government violated its own law by arresting two men and
sending them without a trial to Egypt, where they were later tortured.
They were asked to
do this by the Bush regime.
The people of Sweden should remove from office or employment everyone
who participated in carrying this out.
The lies used to excuse and minimize wholesale slaughter in Vietnam
are coming back
today for Iraq.
Bush is pressuring the Caribbean nations with threats of war,
demanding that they
accept the unelected Bush-installed
government of Haiti. But they insist on upholding democracy
even against US pressure.
When Bush speaks of trying to establish democracy in Iraq,
ask why he got rid of it in Haiti.
The Pentagon sticks to its stories about killings in Iraq
regardless
of contrary evidence--whether the victims are famous wedding singers,
or award-winning journalists, or whoever.
The Bush administration made contrary statements about whether
it respects the Geneva Conventions in Iraq, and is trying to
stretch the terms to strip many civilian prisoners of protection.
The lawyer for one of the accused Bush forces soldiers
says that
General Sanchez watched the abuse of prisoners.
How Bush Sr. and the Carlyle group are profiteering from Iraq.
The Iraqi government, to be created on June 30, will give immunity to
the Bush forces for their violence against Iraqis. Bush and the Iraqi
government will pretend that this is because they "invited" the Bush
forces to occupy Iraq.
I don't think many Iraqis will be fooled.
More facts emerge about the attack on the
wedding party, as the Bush forces continue to insist they were
attacking the resistance, but it looks like their description of the
attack is entirely untrue.
However, there are conflicting statements about whether the people at
the party fired into the air for celebration.
Dubya's lawyers warned of
possible war crimes prosecutions if he went ahead with some of his
plans for how to treat prisoners. His approach to the problem was to
make a "declaration" that the rules didn't apply to Taliban and Al
Qa'ida prisoners.
Such prosecutions should still be possible--because Dubya's saying the
rules don't apply doesn't make it so. The Nuremberg trials established
the principle that "I was following orders" is not a defense. "I was
following my own decision" is surely not a defense.
But this time, let's improve on Nuremberg by not using the death
penalty. Imprisoning Dubya for life will teach the world a more
constructive lesson than executing him.
Abuse of prisoners and killing of civilians are not the only sort of
war crime. Nazi leaders were also charged and convicted in Nuremberg
with the crime of aggressive war. Bush appears to be guilty of this
in Iraq, and probably in Haiti as well.
Diebold plans to move beyond eliminating paper ballots, and
eliminate paper voter rolls. So there will be nothing except a
computer to determine who's eligible to vote, count how many people
voted, etc.
Some selected Iraqi prisoners are being kept in small cells that the
International Red Cross calls inhumane.
This is being done under a special command that doesn't report to the
generals in control of the Bush forces in Iraq. This shows that the
abuse of prisoners is too broad to be their responsibility alone.
Israeli troops have started a plan to
demolish hundreds of houses in
Rafah, while making inconsistent statements about the plan.
We know that junk food companies promote bad and even specifically
dangerous eating habits with their ads. But this example
really wins the prize.
A new UN treaty
bans the use of a dozen long-lasting toxic chemicals,
but it will be a long time before the quantities already in the
environment cease to endanger the health of people and animals.
Torturing prisoners isn't limited to the US.
Farhat Kaya, a human rights campaigner in Turkey,
was arrested for providing legal help to those who oppose a new pipeline,
and
tortured afterwards.
He was
previously imprisoned simply for speaking of another imprisoned
Kurd, Mr. Ocalan, as "Mr" Ocalan (or rather the equivalent in
Turkish).
Regardless of what one thinks about the former activities of Mr
Ocalan, who led a Kurdish underground insurrection, to imprison
someone for making such a statement is trampling basic human rights.
Powell admits the goal of "handing over sovereignty" is "so it no
longer looks like an occupation".
Will this change anything?
Recently the Bush forces attacked a
wedding party in Iraq and killed 40 people
I am confident the Bush forces did not intend to kill people in a
wedding party. They are smart enough to recognize that the
consequences can only bad for them.
The Bush forces claim that the party was a group of resistance
fighters and opened fire first. As soon as I read that, I suspected
that people in the party had been firing in the air for celebration.
Maybe a frightened pilot honestly mistook that for enemy action.
Maybe erroneous intelligence reports told the Bush forces there was a
resistance group in that house. Maybe it really is one--most Iraqis
support the resistance more or less, according to recent polls. Pick
any house in Iraq, and it is probably involved in the resistance
somehow.
Clearly this occurrence involved some kind of bad luck, but it is part
of a larger pattern. At that level, this is not a matter of chance,
it is predictable and inevitable. Such things happen every day in an
occupation of a hostile population, which is why the occupation
inevitably makes Iraqis hate the Bush forces. Any puppet government
that depends on the Bush forces to stay in power will be continuing
the occupation, and the resistance will continue until it is
overthrown.
The computers we discard usually end up in poor countries such as
China, where people take them apart to recycle the valuable materials.
Recycling is useful, but with this method it is also poisonous, since
the computer parts release toxic substances into the air and water.
Many countries seem to fail to enforce the treaty that bans export
of hazardous waste. The US didn't even sign it.
The best way to recycle used computers is to install
GNU/Linux on them,
and give them to a poor country to use instead of burn.
The population of Easter Island wiped out the animals and trees that
their lives depended on, and crashed into starvation and war. They
did not look ahead to project the consequences of overusing the
resources they needed.
We could meet a similar fate.
In Russia, the war on drugs is being applied to veterinarians, who
face up to 15 years imprisonment for using the standard anesthetic
which is banned in Russia. What drugs are Russian prosecutors using?
Chalabi used to be a darling of the Bush forces, because
he told them about nonexistent Iraqi weapons which they used
as an excuse for war. But they have had a falling out, and
the Bush troops went to search his house.
It looks like Chalabi will say whatever is convenient in the
circumstances. This is the sort of person that is useful to Bush, and
that Bush discards when he ceases to be useful.
The General Accounting Office says that the Bush administration
illegally produced phony news reports in support of the Bush
medicare bill.
How the Portuguese dictatorship adapted and extended CIA torture methods.
(The CIA torture manual they used was declassified in 1997.)
Some US prisons
boast about how badly they treat prisoners.
Bush's failure to keep track of civilian casualties in Iraq
violates
the Geneva Conventions.
The
Amnesty International Report mentioned.
Specific evidence indicates that the video of Zarqawi and the
beheading of Nicholas Berg was a fake, actually filmed inside the
Bush-controlled Abu Ghraib prison.
There are rumors that Bush and Blair are looking for a way to
get
their troops out of Iraq. However, they are still trying to leave a
puppet government behind, which can't possibly work for long.
Perhaps they hope to prop it up until November so Bush can claim
"success" for the election.
I saw another article today saying that they are planning to give
Iraqi army units--under US command, of course--the option to decline
to fight particular battles, to gain UN approval for the plans. The
fact that this is even under discussion shows that what they are
considering is a puppet government. The UN should not authorize
anything remotely like this.
Starbucks workers in New York have unionized.
They are ill-paid, and overworked to the point where
the job causes physical pain.
Gay marriage has begun in Massachusetts.
Bush has
established a pattern of disregarding any and all
laws, constitutional requirements, and treaties that protect
human rights. Kerry will be tempted to continue this system.
One danger you face from this is that the US could
convince another country to send you to Syria to be tortured.
This is called "rendition". It is
described in this article
(not near the beginning).
Three Iraqi news reporters were
arrested and abused by the Bush forces
in January.
After accusations of abusing prisoners in Afghanistan (some of them to
death), the US Army says it will investigate--but
keep the results of
the investigation secret. The prisons themselves are secret too.
An
estimated 10,000 are held prisoner by the US outside US territory;
prisoners have been brought to Iraq from 21 other countries.
Secret prisons are inexcusable. To keep someone in prison is a
serious matter; the reasons, as well as the way the person is treated,
must stand up to scrutiny. The press must be given access to
check how prisoners are treated.
The claim that letting the press investigate the prisoners' claims
of abuse would be exploiting prisoners is the sort of absurd lie
that Bush is famous for.
Chinese ex-president Jiang Zemin is being sued the US for leading a
campaign of torture and murder. The Bush administration filed a brief
asking for the suit to be dismissed.
I guess leaders who preside over systems of torture and killing have
learned to stick up for each other.
John Negroponte, who is supposed to be US ambassador to the supposed
Iraqi government-to-be, presided over
US support and cooperation for torture by Battalion 316 in
Honduras. This article is based on interviews with victims and
with members of that battalion.
With over 2 million Americans in serving prison sentences, the large
prison population has
effects on society.
Reports of a person who encountered a DOD program to study the organization of peace-leaning US
organizations.
This fits in an interesting way the news that Rumsfeld has been trying
to have the DOD take over intelligence operations from the CIA.
A Newsweek article ties
high officials to torture decisions.
You might get the idea from this article that the Geneva Conventions
apply to only some of the people in a war zone. In fact they cover
everyone; there's no exception for "illegal combatants" (though they
can be charged with the crime of being such, and punished if
convicted). Taliban fighters were part of the army of the government
of Afghanistan, so they were legal combatants.
This article also seems to treat the use of torture by the CIA as
acceptable provided they keep it secret.
A prison manager who oversaw abuse of prisoners as a civilian in the
US was
chosen by Bush to run the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Bush was given
formal advice to consider the Geneva Convention
"obsolete". There is evidence connecting Rumsfeld directly
with torture practices.
Three mothers whose sons were killed by police in the US, having
committed no crimes, are
searching for justice, but finding that
the police tend not to be punished for this.
This is the tip of an iceberg of systematic police mistreatment of
certain racial groups.
Former marine
Staff Sgt Masset reports on the Iraqi civilians he
killed, how he concluded that the war was wrong, and how he was
punished for saying so.
The
use of "civilian" mercenaries as soldiers in Iraq has many
effects. It artificially reduces the military casualties figures by
failing to count these soldiers. It bypasses military laws against
torture and other things. It also raises a few soldiers'
pay--sometimes quite a lot.
There are reports that a
secret Pentagon program, established by
Rumsfeld to carry out torture on a few Al Qa'ida suspects, was in an
act of "stupidity" extended to include lots of Iraqis arrested for
whatever reason.
Extending the program in this way may have been stupid, but let's not
presume that torture is legitimate to use on Al Qa'ida suspects.
The abuse and contempt for lives of the occupied people
seen in Iraq have
precedents in previous US wars.
So do the tendencies not to punish the perpetrators very much,
and to deny the true scope of what has occurred.
A former Guantanamo prisoner
describes how he and others were tortured in an organized, systematic
way He says the staff made videos of everything. These videos
could be proof positive of organized systematic brutality.
Amnesty International lists
specific cases where Bush forces soldiers killed unarmed Iraqis
who were clearly no threat.
Considering how hard it is to get evidence in such cases, there must
be far more cases that could not be documented.
Thousands of people in Rafah are fleeing their homes, expecting
Israel to demolish them.
More information is available at
http://www.btselem.org .
The policy of supporting Israel no matter what it does, adopted by
both Bush and Kerry
makes it impossible for the US to sponsor peace negotiations between
Israel and Palestine.
Guards in the Bush forces set dogs on prisoners, raped them, etc.
Their behavior reflects the general attitude of Bush & Co--the Geneva
conventions are just words, get tough, etc.--which were the motive for
bypassing safeguards formerly established in the US Army to prevent
such things.
US-sponsored torture did not start in Iraq. The
training manuals used in the School of the Americas taught torture to
over 60,000 soldiers from Latin America.
It also taught the technique of taking someone's family members
hostage to put pressure on him or her. That policy too is being used
in Iraq.
In Colombia, the government which receives US funding through "Plan
Colombia" lets unofficial death squads implement a similar policy by
killing the relatives of union organizers.
Human Rights Watch says US prisoners in
Afghanistan are being abused.
Even the FBI stays away from CIA interrogations for fear they are
illegal. The British
learned the techniques from North Korean and Chinese "brainwashing"
that they applied to prisoners in the Korean War.
Innocent-sounding labels such as "stress positions" stand for torture
that over time causes permanent physical injury. Other forms of abuse
not named in that story can also cause injury or even death--for
instance, keeping people in small rooms for a long time, or kicking
them, or denying them medical care when they are sick.
It is especially ironic that, while the Bush forces in Iraq were
brutalizing Iraqi prisoners, including people who were arrested for no
reason, Bush has been
bragging over and over that his invasion had saved Iraqis from such
mistreatment.
After battles in Gaza in which Palestinians killed Israeli soldiers,
Israeli forces took revenge on the helpless, by
demolishing 88 buildings and leaving 1000 people homeless.
Torture practices in Iraq my trace back to practices used by the
UK against IRA suspects in the 1970s.
Why all of a sudden are Americans outraged about torture in Iraq,
after ignoring
so many cruelties?
Specific news about Iraqis who were arrested and tortured by the Bush
forces, and one of them killed, was
published in February in London. But America did not pay
attention--perhaps because there were no pictures.
The RIAA doesn't officially have the status of a police force, but its
unofficial
police have learned to respect people's rights as much as real
police.
The U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. Act, enacted in folly after the Sepember 11
attacks,
parallels a law enacted after another attack which cut away legal
rights in another country.
Evidence is appearing that one specific Iraqi prisoner was tortured and
killed by the Bush forces. His death certificate was falsified.
The fact that Iraqi pathologists are prohibited from checking what the
Bush forces say is the most significant thing here, because it is a
systematic policy with no other likely purpose but to cover up
torture. Who gave the order for that?
UK police
used a fake "security threat" as an excuse to arrest a peaceful
solitary protestor on a permanent vigil.
He was charged with assaulting an officer, though he was the only one
injured and it seems more likely that the officers attacked him.
Bush is deploying an expensive missile defense system which, as the
Union of Concerned Scientists points out,
is so easy to fool that even North Korea could do it. If the
system leads a US president to believe the US is safe from missile
attacks, it could indirectly do great harm.
I don't object to missile defense in theory, if it can be done
effectively and cheaply. However, looking at the real systems, I
think they make no sense except as ways to funnel taxpayers' money to
certain companies and provide an
excuse to cut social spending.
India used a low-tech electronic vote counting system that
avoids some of the dangers of US computerized voting machines
through the inflexibility of its circuitry.
Rancid from Top to Bottom: Green Lights for
Torture.
A Seattle high school student was questioned for
drawing cartoons criticizing Bush.
The school representatives say they were "concerned about violence".
That is balderdash: a cartoon is not violence, just a depiction of
violence. If they are concerned about violence, they should question
Bush about the Iraqis and Colombians he has killed.
I hope the student speaks up with pride to identify himself.
Pictures of prisoner humiliation published by the Daily Mirror
in London
turn out to have been faked.
The fact that these particular photos were faked does not really
change anything, in my opinion, given that we have plenty other
evidence that the practice of abuse and killing of prisoners in Iraq
is real.
To build democracy in Iraq, how about
listening to what Iraqis want?
A UN tribunal has indicted General Wiranto of Indonesia for war crimes
in the massacres at the end of the Indonesian occupation of East
Timor. Wiranto may
nonetheless be the next president of Indonesia.
Brutality begins at home, as torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq
mirrors common practices in US prisons. The guards and police who
attack helpless prisoners are more often rewarded than punished.
There is reason to doubt the official Bush story about Nick Berg,
and also about al-Zarqawi, whose actions seem tailor-made to
help Bush justify his position.
The CIA has a
decades-long involvement with torture, including
research into innovative torture techniques. Prisons in the US also
frequently subject prisoners to abuse as a matter of intentional
policy.
Tragic killings
claim noncombatant Israeli and Palestinian lives,
but the world media don't give them equal attention.
A Halliburton subcontractor is forcing Indian workers to work 18 hours
a day in
conditions like third-world sweatshops.
These workers were lured with the sort of lies typical of those who
recruit girls for forced-prostitution operations. I think this is a
symptom of the general attitude of arrogance in the management of many
companies.
The Israeli soldier
accused of shooting peace activist Tom Hurndall
says he was pressured to confess; but he is not charged with murder,
even though the shooting was clearly intended to kill. Hurndall's
mother says that the orders given to the soldier and the superiors
who gave it must also be investigated.
Amnesty International says that British troops in the Bush forces have
killed many unarmed Iraqis in unjustifiable circumstances but that the
investigations--when they happen at all--are inadequate. In general,
the Bush forces are failing to investigate killings.
Dubya liked to talk about being the "education president".
Here are the facts about how his actions fall short.
An FAA manager
destroyed taped evidence provided by air traffic
controllers on September 11. Such a bizarre action is suspicious.
As the US uses "aid workers" for intelligence gathering,
aid workers
are starting to be targeted by the enemies of the US.
Remember how the original Iraq weapons inspectors were kicked out
after it turned out that the US had been using them for miscellaneous
spying?
Iraq-style practices of torture, and others, are
widespread throughout
a system of US-run prisons operated in many countries to deny the
prisoners the benefit of US law. Prisoners are handed over between
countries in violation of their legal rights; US agents hand prisoners
over to Egypt and Morocco. which can torture them more than US agents
will do.
You might think that it is exaggeration to describe loud music as a
form of torture--but even at the levels young people voluntarily
listen to, it causes permanent injury to hearing. The torturers
probably make it much louder than that.
The
logic of wars of conquest and occupation: even when it becomes
clear the invaders cannot win, the leaders can't admit the war was a
mistake, so they drag it out at the expense of even more deaths.
Dubya's recent
fulsome praise of Rumsfeld is an illustration of this
pattern. The more Rumsfeld comes under attack, the more strongly Bush
has to praise him, because he can never admit a mistake.
Monsanto has
given up on Roundup Ready genetically modified wheat.
Meanwhile,
genetically modified maize is causing problems because its
pollen spreads. In the past, a farmer in Canada was sued because his
corn had patented genes which had spread into his field. Now
a new problem is appearing: insects are becoming resistant to the
new maize. It may not remain effective for long.
I don't think the idea of genetic engineering of foods is inherently
monstruous. The domestication of plants and animals is itself a slow
method of genetically engineering them. More advanced methods of
genetical engineering could have very useful results, some day.
However, corporate-controlled genetic engineering is dangerous. The
tendency of today's multinational corporations is to disregard dangers
and suppress reports about them, while rushing for a profit. When
corporations fund studies of the effects of their products, those
studies are biased and untrustworthy. And the genetic engineering the
corporations do is designed to boost their profits and keep farmers in
a state of dependence, not designed to serve public needs.
RAND concluded that Bush went
much too far
in removing data from the web after September 11,
because almost all of the removals were ineffective
and irrelevant to preventing terrorism.
The
dossier of dirty tricks used by the Irish government and police to
suppress democracy.
Charles Graner, a Bush forces soldier accused of torture, may have had
prior
experience during his career as a prison guard.
Graner says he was following the orders when carrying out torture.
Other evidence argues that that is true--but his experience probably
made him a ready assistant.
The Israeli Army violently
attacked a protest of women simply carrying posters.
The Israeli regime now considers any form of dissent as a threat if it
is effective, and meets any effective protest with violence, no
matter how peaceful it was.
The Israeli government has been funding construction of illegal
outposts: new settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law.
This is one of many examples showing that the Israeli government has
reached a point where laws are just window dressing. Laws are meant
to restrain government actions and thus protect human rights. When
the government doesn't respect its own laws, no human rights are safe,
and everyone's situation depends on the whim of those in power.
Police pounced on a Critical Mass rally in Montreal and arrested some of
the cyclists. (A Critical Mass rally consists of lots of people
riding bicycles.)
Castro criticized the presidents of Mexico and Peru, accusing them
of bowing to the US and to multinational corporations.
Castro is a dictator, and does not give the people a voice in the
government. The multinational corporations, in the countries that
they dominate, don't give the people a voice either.
The Golem Turns on his Creator.
RAWA protests
against fundamentalists in the Afghan government.
The Israeli government is pressuring Ben Gurion University to fire or
gag Professor Lev Grinberg, after his article criticizing Israeli
assassination policy was falsely
described by an Israeli newspaper as "antisemitism".
The tyrannical policies directed by the occupation at
Palestinians inevitably change the character of the Israeli
state and institutions--and Israelis cannot escape being
victims as well as Palestinians.
The Irish police banned a protest march at the last minute, after a
long campaign of disinformation claiming that protestors were planning
violence. As usual, it was the police who were planning violence;
they attacked peaceful protesters the next day, in an orderly way
suggesting it was explicitly decided by the police commanders.
Although some of the protesters were seriously injured, none of the
police were arrested. But the Irish media are paying no attention.
Together, the government, police, and media have turned into a lie
machine.
Police in Israel beat up
Palestinian prisoners in a courtroom for waving and speaking to
their family members at the other side of the courtroom.
The police described the people they attacked as "terrorists who
started a riot". They have become so used to lying that it is second
nature--truth means nothing to them. Israelis may think that this is
only done to Palestinians or dissidents, but they must not feel safe.
When police become accustomed to barefaced lying, nobody is safe.
The CIA used a US consulate in Saudi Arabia to let
many suspicious characters into the US --according to the State
Department employee who complained because he found it
suspicious. Many of the accused 9/11 hijackers got their visas through
that consulate.
The forms of sexual humiliation used against prisoners in Iraq
seem to be derived from "resistance to interrogation" training, used
to teach some soldiers in the US and UK how to resist such treatment
if they are captured. It looks like some soliers who remembered
this training taught reservists and others who had never experienced
it to use those same techniques on real prisoners.
The killing and injuring of prisoners in Iraq, which also occurs, is
not part of the "resistance to interrogation" training.
The employers of contract torturers in Iraq have heard
no complaints from the Bush forces about this practice.
Here is a list of What Republicans
Believe.
Mr Abd, a prisoner in Iraq, describes how he and
his fellow prisoners were abused and injured by the Bush forces.
Those who ask for patience now in Iraq are
precisely those who had none a year ago.
While this article is right about what it would take to really have a
chance of introducing freedom and democracy to Iraq, we should refuse
to be led into believing that Bush seriously intended to do this. This
was a false excuse, just as nuclear weapons and Al Qa'ida connections
were false excuses.
The Bush forces
burst into a meeting of local leaders in an Iraqi human rights
organization in Hillah. While they had everyone under arrest, they
shot two of the meeting participants in cold blood.
Shooting people in custody is clear abuse of power, and ought to be
part of the investigation of the mistreatment of prisoners.
Meanwhile, one can hardly be surprised, let alone criticize, if the
followers of the murdered sheikhs respond to these killings by
killing. They have no basis to expect justice any other way.
Dozens of killings of prisoners in Bush forces custody in Iraq
are being investigated. But even when soldiers are convicted
for this, they tend to get small punishments.
People are focusing attention on cruel forms of humiliation, such as
making prisoners masturbate and photographing them. But we shouldn't
let these kinky behaviors distract us from the fact that prisoners are
also being killed and physically injured by their captors.
Families of prisoners killed in Iraq have launched
lawsuits in the UK against the government.
Some of the victims of the 2002 massacre in Gujarat, India, were
visiting from the UK. They have launched a legal campaign against the
politicians who planned the massacre.
The CIA says it is
investigating why an Iraqi prisoner died after interrogation. It
appears that rules were circumvented to facilitate use of torture in
Iraq.
50 former US diplomats have sent Bush a letter criticizing
his acceptance of Israeli annexation plans, and the disdain for
years of diplomatic efforts for peace implied by that act.
The Bush administration has been actively trying to
legitimize
torture ever since 9/11, and the campaign continues.
This is the best explanation I've seen tying the torture practices in
Iraq to the Bush administration's high-level policies, and also
demonstrating with a specific example how this has fortified
the Iraqi resistance.
The abuse and beating of prisoners in Abu Ghraib is just a small
part of a
larger picture of violence towards Iraqi civilians.
The Yes Men hit the Heritage Foundation, sending "supporters"
to their meeting to subtly mock them by pretending to agree.
In elections in the US, many ballots do not get counted,
and this includes a
strangely high percentage of ballots
cast by Black voters.
The US government
objects to a European plan to test chemicals for
safety.
Sgt Frederick
kept a diary which describes many forms of
cruelty and injury to prisoners in Iraq.
I don't think this information excuses what Frederick did, but if the
statements are true, they show that numerous others from various
agencies participated in the torture. They should also be accused.
British troops in the Bush forces
also brutalize prisoners. Soldiers
provided photographs, and said this happens often.
Recent refugees from Falluja say the Bush forces were bombarding
residential areas indiscriminately.
California has banned electronic voting machines
that collect votes in unverifiable ways.
Mexico city is sinking, physically, due to the exhaustion of the water
in the land under it. These problems are ultimately due to
overpopulation, and are likely to spread to many other areas.
Bush is
shocked to find that his soldiers tortured prisoners, but does he
really intend to put an end to the practice?
I was not surprised to hear that the Bush forces were torturing
Iraqis. It's normal for an occupying army to get tougher and tougher
when the conquered population turns out not inclined to love its
conquerors. Torture also follows a long US tradition. Remember the
School of the Americas, which taught officers from other countries how
to torture political prisoners and how to murder dissidents. After
public protest, they changed its name, but apparently not its mission.
In addition, Americans and British have been taught to hate and
despise Arabs. And until the news started to leak and embarrass them,
officers did not
really care much about what their men had done.
Bush forces speak of a deal where Falluja would be controlled by Iraqi
forces
led by a former general of Saddam Hussein.
That might work in Falluja, but since the Iraqi resistance has spread
to many areas of the country, a broader solution is needed.
Perhaps Bush's next step will be to put Saddam Hussein in charge of
Iraq. He certainly knows how to keep Iraq under control--and will
probably kill fewer Iraqis than the Bush forces have been killing.
The US government supported Hussein before, so why not again? Bush
only has to teach Americans to forget that Hussein was ever labeled an
enemy.
A Year from "Mission Accomplished", Iraqis celebrate
when Bush forces are defeated. This is not by accident, it is
because of how the occupation works.
Italy's most famous TV journalist has quit, condemning Berlusconi for trying to
bias the public TV there.
Another story, which is not available in a place I can stably link to,
reported that Berlusconi objected when she referred to the Bush forces
in Iraq as an "occupation force" and resistance to them as "Iraqi
resistance". Berlusconi wanted her to call them "the coalition
bringing liberty and democracy to Iraq" and "rebels".
The Irish government banned a
large protest march at the last minute, after a campaign of lies
designed to pretend that violence was planned by someone other than
the police.
(More recently I've heard that the march took place anyway, that the
protest was peaceful, but the police attacked the protestors anyway.
I will post information when I find a good article to reference.)
The Iraqi resistance has helped other kinds
of resistance to US and corporate power in other parts of the
world.
Polls in Iraq show clearly that
Iraqis view the Bush forces as an occupying army. Polls in the US show
Americans are starting to wake up from the sleep spell that Bush cast
on them. However, since Kerry has mostly supported the war, he is not
benefiting from the increased opposition to Bush.
The Bush forces have started to prosecute some of the soldiers in Iraq
for torturing prisoners. However, some of those involved in the
torture are "civilian" contractors and thus hard to punish for what
they do.
What's Wrong
with the European Union?
The Bush forces have changed the Iraqi flag, but Iraqis
reject it and use their old flag as a symbol of resistance.
Bush and his policies remind me increasingly of the former Soviet
Union. In Iraq we see what we used to call a "puppet government" when
the Soviet Union used them to rule other countries. The Soviet Union
also claimed to be giving these countries great benefits.
Korean organizations are defying a law requiring them to
verify the name of anyone who posts a comment about elections on the
internet.
Thugs in Colombia recently
killed relatives of a Coca Cola union leader.
Coca Cola company is being sued in the US for acts like this, and
there is a world-wide boycott (pass the word).
The reason these things go on in Colombia is that the US-supported
government there does not try to stop them.
A US court has become
legal battleground for abortion vocabulary.
Unlike some people, I'm not afraid to say "abortion". I'm not
"pro-choice", I'm in favor of the right to have an abortion.
Bush decided to recruit
Baathist generals and teachers, after the new Iraqi army refused
to fight against the resistance.
One said that the Bush forces are the terrorists. That description
seems to be accurate, because they seem to intend to cause so much
death and destruction in Falluja that Iraqis will be terrified to
resist the continued occupation of their country.
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