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UK police seized an Indymedia server because of a message anonymously posted on it.
The first US town to move because of global warming.
It's hitting Alaska first, because the warming is greatest in the Arctic and Antarctic. But it will get to the othyer coastal states by and by, if we don't reduce our generation of greenhouse gases.
In 2002,
Bush ignored a North Korean diplomatic initiative
about nuclear weapons talks.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
He was too busy lying about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear weapons program to bother trying to convince North Korea to end a real nuclear weapons program.
Iranians voted for the hard-liner who doesn't want friendship
with Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Democracy in this election was only partial, since the mullahs vetoed reformist candidates. However, there was some democracy; the candidates disagreed on many issues, including how to treat the US. This election shows that Iranians won't welcome invading Bush forces with cheers.
Farmers from Colombia are suing BP for using paramilitaries to force them off their land and into destitution. Those who didn't go were killed.
Multinational corporations working with paramilitaries to murder and bully people seems to be a pattern for Colombia.
The Wall Street Journal systematically distorts the evidence about global warming.
In this it works hand in glove with Bush, whose efforts to disguise the problem have been mentioned here before.
A former Bush regime official
joins those who believe the WTC towers
were destroyed by explosives placed within the buildings.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The only way to sort out facts from suspicions, and draw a conclusion we can rely on, is with a real investigation. But as long as the Bush regime won't allow a real investigation, we are justified in tentatively following the suspicions which lead to the government.
The World Tribunal on Iraq is presenting the evidence
against the Bush regime for its war of conquest.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An anonymous survey of librarians finds that government agents
often gather information about who reads what--
contradicting official denials.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The US government is trying to take advantage of a presumption that it is on our side, to get away with attacking our freedom and lying about it. That presumption is what we must discard.
The UK imprisons thousands of refugees who came seeking asylum, without justification and in violation of its stated policies.
Scott Ritter:
The US Invasion of Iran Has Begun!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Many Iranians want democracy in an independent Iran, and they might accept foreign help in achieving this--if they could trust it and did not see it as an intrusion. They surely won't accept the kind of "help" Bush wants to give them.
Uri Avnery: the fanatical settlers are on a track to a violent confrontation with the democratic elements of Israel.
Even Democrats in Congress are starting to say that Bush is losing
the war. But some of them still insist that the goal is to win it.
Will they ever learn?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Chinese peasants increasingly defy the local government authorities
who are working hand in hand with businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
At the same time, China is more popular than the US among people in the UK.
I think they have good reason to hold those views. The government of China is undemocratic, oppresses the poor, and doesn't respect human rights--Bush is heading in that direction, but has not gone so far. However, while China has threatened to launch a war of conquest (against Taiwan), it has never actually started one. And it doesn't attack human rights in other countries as the US does. Bliar, the great enemy of human rights in the UK, gets his support from the US, not from China.
Dalits in India are not allowed even to walk through an upper-caste neighborhood. If they do, they may be attacked, even killed.
Fox News won in court against the journalists who sued after they were fired for trying to publish a story about the use and dangers of bovine growth hormone.
Monsanto, which has a history of attacking scientists who publish results that criticize Monsanto, is also involved here.
ACLU: Science under Siege (by the Bush regime).
The genocide of the minorities of Burma.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Iranian women protested the unfair election despite police threats.
Wanted for kidnaping: 13 US government agents who seized a refugee in Italy and sent him to Egypt to be tortured.
In Germany,
a major politician dares to denounce the relentlessly
cruel pseudo-logic of neoliberalism.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, the Bliar regime is
pressuring Europe to abandon its social
policies, with the argument that businesses prefers to locate in the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The rest of Europe should turn this argument around. Of course business prefers countries that give business more consideration (and ordinary people less), but some country's success in drawing business away from other countries by undercutting social policies is something to be punished and stopped, not imitated.
He also criticizes farm subsidies, which are a more complex issue. The only valid reason for them is so that rural people are not forced to move to the city and give up farming. Farm subsidies going to anything but a family farm definitely should be eliminated. Subsidies to family farms have to be reconsidered, because they do social and environmental harm as well as good.
These two issues should never be combined--they are structurally different. Farm subsidies can be a form of catering to a minority, albeit a large one. The welfare state and labor regulations help the majority, all except the wealthy.
An Italian ISP collaborated with police to spy on a political organization whose site they hosted, while lying to the organization about the reason for the site's outage.
The record companies (i.e., music factories) are terrorizing
parents in the UK with
demands for money they don't have.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
While Bliar talks about protecting the environment, behind the
scenes he is
trying to downgrade its priority in the EU.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bliar is
once again attacking the right to trial by jury, continuing
his persistent attack on the rights of the accused.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
In Lebanon, a series of anti-Syrian politican figures have been
murdered.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Iran
responded to a presidential candidate's complaint of ballot-stufing
by (1) an irrelevant recount and (2) banning the newspapers that printed
the complain.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Contrast this with Bush, who arranged for recounts to be done in a useless fashion, and didn't have to ban any newspapers because major US newspapers are sufficiently controled that they never tried to publish this.
In the UK, lots of children are being given
ASBOs. One child was told he'll be imprisoned if he uses dirty
words. Since he has Tourette's Syndrome, he literally cannot stop
himself.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This example shows how outrageous and stupid the system has become, but it's unjust even when it is not so outrageous. If a child with no mental illness, or an adult, had been threatened with imprisonment for saying dirty words, it would be equally unjust. No one should be imprisoned for saying "fuck" or "shit", nor even for saying them ten times a day.
The ASBO is a scheme for imprisoning people for acts that are not crimes, and denying them even the meager protections remaining in UK criminal law. Furthermore, it operates under a deceptive pretense not to be doing those things. In effect, every official that defends of ASBOs is a liar.
Various US allies are attacking or resisting the US practice
of kidnaping
people to be tortured.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The EU, which has mostly done a good job of balancing capitalism and
the welfare state, is now under
pressure from conservatives who want to destroy the welfare state.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
In the 90s, the EU was made a lot more powerful than it was before; however, its lawmaking is not democratic, and the result is that it often acts as a means for business interests to impose their will on all of Europe.
Removing Bolton from the State Department enabled some useful international cooperation to proceed.
If Bolton is approved as US ambassador to the UN, he will surely block agreement on many things. However, if he plays obstructionist in the UN on high-profile actions, his obstructionism could backfire. Other countries could isolate the Bush regime and make agreements without US participation, which could end the ability of the US to impede necessary world activities.
How far Bush has gone to sabotage action on global warming.
It's a mistake to try to "bring Bush on board" by making the agreement empty. On this issue, as so many others, Bush is the enemy, and he should be treated as one. One does not give an enemy veto power over one's actions. Better to denounce him, and use him to rally public opinion.
Opposition to ID cards grows in the UK, when people learn what they
will cost.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
But we have to go further--and we need to teach people to see the deeper danger. Please tell other people about the issue.
Global warming threatens
devastating droughts in Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
The EU Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the Blair regime for several kinds of violations, including denial of rights without trial, ASBOs, and use of evidence obtained through torture.
When the Center for Disease Control discovered conclusive evidence
that mercury-based preservatives in baby vaccines were causing autism,
it covered up the evidence to
protect the vaccine companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Senate majority leader Frist is directly participating in the cover-up, having been bought with campaign contributions. Meanwhile, these mercury-based vaccines continue to be shipped to other countries.
Bliar's
principle of never opposing Bush is about to collide with his
proclaimed goal of reducing global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bliar keeps on pretending that through his "special relationship" he can persuade Bush to change. He gets only the tiniest results, but he keeps saying there will be more, if we just wait and see.
Mukhtar Mai,
who fought back in the courts of Pakistan after the
dominant caste in her village gang-raped her to punish her family,
looked like she was winning. Then she was imprisoned by the
government of Pakistan and blocked from travelling--or
testifying--while the previously-convicted rapists have been freed.
Afterward she withdrew her plan to tour the US to talk about the issue.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I think the government of Pakistan must have threatened her family, or something like that. President Musharraf's response to this issue resembles that of his friend Bush when US atrocities are exposed: "Just hush it up".
In China, developers send thugs to attack poor people who won't sell
their homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This reminds me of what I've read in books such as Red Azalea, about the bullying by gangs that took place during the Cultural Revolution--except that now the individual acts of bullying are on a larger scale.
Sharon wants to use HAMAS participation in Palestinian elections as an excuse to end dealings with the Palestinian Authority or abolish democracy in Palestine. But the intelligent thing to do is to negotiate with HAMAS.
There is some evidence that Kofi Annan knew about his son's
corrupt dealings with Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
If Kofi Annan has lied about this, he should lose his post (at least). But what's even more significant is the way even worse lies by US Republicans are ignored--and often cannot even be investigated, because they block investigations.
The Bush forces lied to the UK about using napalm-like bombs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Mugabe is forcing multitudes of poor people out of the cities by destroying their food and shelter. Strikers have been threatened with arrest.
The super-rich in the US
are gaining so much that they are leaving
the ordinary rich behind.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Last month, the police who shot Harry Stanley had their conviction overturned. Now they face trial for murder, after it was proved that they lied about the events.
Political-level officials in the Department of "Justice"
ordered the lawyers handling the case against the tobacco companies
to reduce the demanded penality from 130 billion to 10 billion.
In effect, to
let them off the hook.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This probably relates to campaign contributions from tobacco companies to some Republican politician.
The oppression of copyright law is
seeping into more areas of life. Photo printing stores are
refusing to print photos because they look "professional".
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
I guess you should take it as a complement if they refuse to print your photo. The first time.
Companies that make birthday cakes are now scared to let customers
draw on them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
There are two paths for society to choose from: oppressively enforce this unjust law, or get rid of it.
The Holy Libel, after Republicans
rewrite it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Both levels of Diebold optical-scan vote-counting machines
seem to be easy to fiddle--and it looks like they were
designed for that.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Now another big accounting corporation has gone bad, and the US
government
doesn't dare prosecute it because it is so big.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Saddam Hussein had a chance to speak at his trial, but the Bush forces
blanked out what he said. Perhaps they were afraid he would tell the
truth.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
20% of all bird species are threatened with extinction.
Lecturer Jorge Cortell was forced to resign from the Universidad Politecnica
in Valencia, Spain, for
giving a talk on the legal use of peer-to-peer networks.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
After the publicity resulting from these events, Cortell was offered a radio show--but subsequently the offer was withdrawn after company headquarters put pressure on the manager who had offered it to him. More censorship.
Congressman Sessions introduced a bill to prohibit cities from setting up wireless networks for their citizens.
Congressman Sessions owns
half a million dollars of stock
in a company that doesn't want cities to do that.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This site shows what the war in Iraq has cost US taxpayers, and what else could have been done with that much money.
But don't let this distract you from the principle reason not to start such a war: it's wrong. It would have been just as wrong even if it had not cost a dime.
The Filippine president
was recorded apparently fixing the election.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
The first prosecution under Denmark's "anti-terrorism" law is
Greenpeace. Its members
hung a banner, and that is treated as "terrorism"!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
People have been saying all along that these laws were directed at suppressing dissidents and not really at terrorists.
Ethopia's government shot and arrested protestors, and closed radio stations. In response, taxi drivers and others are on strike.
Some Democrats want to
close the Guantanamo prison camp and move the prisoners "elsewhere"--where,
presumably, abuses such as imprisonment without trial and torture could be more
effectively covered up.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
How Bush forces recruiters prey on the weakness of high-schoolers. If the caller ID says "USMC", don't answer the phone!
Does anyone make a phone that does caller ID and can be set to hang up automatically when it doesn't like the name that's calling?
Even tame US reporters can see that the Bush forces' Iraqi Army won't be "ready" any time soon to take over the occupation of their own country on behalf of Bush.
The Bush forces have resorted to body counts as a way of proving
their winning. Of course, the "enemy corpses" can
include lots of civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The statement that the use of body counts is not responsible for atrocities may be correct--because the atrocities were happening already.
Sri Lankans are protesting because their government is using
the tsunami as the excuse to
take land away from local people and give it to hotels.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Tsunamis are not common in the Indian Ocean, and with a warning system in place, there is no reason not to let people live on the coast.Tsunamis are not common in the Indian Ocean, and with a warning system in place, there is no reason not to let people live on the coast.
Human Rights Watch reports that the Uzbek regime did massacre civilians, then lied about it.
It's interesting to contrast the Bush regime's posture regarding freedom and democracy in Uzbekistan with its stated posture regarding freedom and democracy in Iraq.
In 2001, an American was more likely to die from nutritional deficiency than from terrorism.
So why is there a "War on Terrorism" instead of a "War on Hunger"?
What's the Bush regime's
real motive for doing what it is doing?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush regime plans involve
fighting a "universal adversary", which lumps together unions and civil
rights groups with religious fanatics.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Polls show Americans are
turning against Bush, and seeing through his
lies. However, they are not enthusiastic about the Democratic
Party--nor should they be, since it is almost as bad and supports most
of the same lies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Far from Over: Bolivia on the Brink of Civil War-or Revolution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bolivia's president has resigned, and the head of the senate (who previously criticized the president for not repressing the protestors) was persuaded to let the succession pass him by.
So far, things are moving on a good path, but the battle isn't over.
Four students protesting Coca Cola company in Colombia were
kidnaped by thugs and threatened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
These are the same sort of thugs that killed the union organizers, which was the reason for the protests. Perhaps the same thugs.
The International Criminal Court will investigate and
try the individuals who organized the massacres of Darfur, probably
including officials of the Sudanese government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
They should investigate Bush next.
The MIT Industrial Liaison program sent me a report which proudly announced:
DuPont becomes the leading R&D investor in MIT with a $25-million renewal that calls for expansion into nanotechnology, alternative energy, and more.
If MIT considers itself a business with investors, its tax exemption should be taken away.
Many workers are now being required to wear computers that control and monitor all their activities, turning them into puppets.
This practice should be illegal.
German scientists were paid by tobacco companies to minimize the danger of smoking and oppose laws to limit smoking. See also similar behavior by Monsanto.
An award-winning Indian film-maker, on tour in the US, was harrassed by New York City police, purely because he was taking pictures on the street. (Which is not even illegal.)
The world's leading scientific academies have formally told
Bush:
act now to reduce greenhouse gases, before it is too late.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
China is
taking action now.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I think Bush will persist in what he is doing. Cheney surely knows that global warming is real, so he he must have decided not to care about the harm it will cause. Perhaps he thinks his family will buy its way out of the problem.
Republicans in Congress are actively
pushing lobbyists to get more
involved in the Republican party--thus making the sale of laws more
systematic, even as they assure they will get the bulk of the money.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Taliban continue fighting in some areas of Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with Joseph Campbell, from 1985, is particularly
interesting as a background to the activities of theocratic
Christians today.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Deputy President of South Africa has been caught taking bribes, but so far he has not been prosecuted.
A gold company is blocking debt relief for poor countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The political problems of Africa are complex, and just abolishing
debts
doesn't assure the people will benefit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
However, not abolishing debts assures they will suffer.
What's so Revolutionary about
Venezuelan Coal?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Governor of Massachusetts has been lying about
his position on abortion rights, according to one of his aides.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Democrats
lost women's votes because they moved to the right on issues women care
about. But they have not learned their lesson.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Japan is making tremendous investments to
cut energy use.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Brazilian government has arrested 86 businessmen and government officials
for illegally
cutting down the rain forest.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Indigenous Uprising:
The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
National ID cards could make identity theft easier (as well as
giving the government unacceptable power to control citizens).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli soldiers confessed participating in a reprisal murder operation against innocent Palestinians. They say they were specifically ordered to kill innocent people.
Depleted uranium:
a returned veteran's story.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Doug Rokke, who was in charge of DU for the US Army,
talks about how dangerous he found it to be.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Pesticides damage the sperm count of rats in a way that is new to
science. It lasts for several generations.
They may be responsible
for a similar effect in humans.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
One side effect of this damage could be reduced human population growth. But this is not the way I would prefer to achieve that goal.
Oil magnate Khodorovsky was sentenced to 9 years in prison--for tax
evasion, but he was prosecuted because he opposed President Putin.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
What a laugh to see Bush say, "Over here you're innocent until proven guilty". Over here, you're labeled an "enemy combatant" and you don't get a trial at all.
The New York Times defends globalization with
superficial, thoughtless
arguments. It should outsource its editorials to Kerala--then they
would make more sense.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Supreme Court gave approval to Athur Andersen's destruction of Enron's documents. Accountants can now participate in covering up corporate fraud with no fear of retribution.
New reports of torture in Guantanamo show it didn't start there, that it went as far as causing permanent physical injury, and that it yielded false confessions.
Mugabe is
razing the cities of Zimbabwe, where people oppose him. Over a million
people are now homeless.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Growing problem for military recruiters: parents.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Note how the recruiters threaten to bring back the draft if people won't fight Bush's wars voluntarily. Bush has no intention of letting Americans decide to live in peace.
Arizona has adopted a voting requirement whose mere expense
will discourage poor people from voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli protestors had to evade arbitrary military blockaders
to reach a joint protest march with Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This Republican bill would require Americans to report their relatives (and friends) to the police, or face imprisonment themselves.
How's that for family values?
Bush launched the war against Iraq in 2002 while he was still
pretending to be considering it as a possibility.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces continue to stir up hatred among Iraqis. For
instance, as fighting continues in Falluja, they have provided no help
in rebuilding, and most of the inhabitants still alive are living in
tents in the rubble. They continue blocking medical supplies and the
activities of the doctors. And all independent journalists are
excluded.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Greg Palast explains why there is no serious investigative journalism
in mainstream US media. The standard practice is to kill any
investigation based on evidence from a confidential source if a
government representative privately denies the claim.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Economic Alternatives to Neoliberalism
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
My favorite part: "Violence is thus not merely a manifestation of the rule of undemocratic leadership in counties such as Zimbabwe and Swaziland. It is, rather, an essential feature of neoliberalism."
People have proved it is easy to rig an election on Diebold vote
counting machines--by cracking the system.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of Iraqi civilians get imprisoned for no reason by
the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush moves to make the Securities and Exchange Commission
useless,
just as he has destroyed many other regulatory agencies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Israel plans to demolish
88 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Correction: This note orginally said 1000 homes were to be demolished. The correct number is 88 homes, with 1000 people left homeless.
Bush is spending billions on space-based weapons,
and on missile-defense schemes that probably don't work.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush regime officials are attacking Amnesty International, as they
attack everyone who criticizes the regime in any way. We should
interpret this as an indication that Amnesty's report stung Bush,
and do more of the same.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The list of views for which the Bushmen criticize Amnesty could serve as an introduction to understanding the modern political situation. For instance, states like the Bush regime are far more dangerous to humans and to human civilization than any underground terrorist groups.
The US media's response to the Amnesty International report measures just how effectively controlled the media are. The Washington Post's comment is particularly interesting: calling Amnesty's criticism of Bush regime atrocities "counterproductive". In effect, this says the criticism was valid, but that it is more "productive" to accept the regime's lies.
Bush is losing some of the control over the government he set
up in Iraq.
They may not finish writing a constitution on Bush's
timetable.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
WTO negotiations are headed in a direction to
drive millions of
subsistance farmers into destitution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The poor farmers, rather than kill themselves as thousands are already doing in India, ought to start revolutionary movements aimed at taking their countries out of the WTO.
When two US citizens were arrested and tortured in Pakistan, FBI agents participated in the interrogation, while the US embassy refused to help them.
This illustrates the Bush regime's general policy of opposition to human rights and its disrespect for the truth.
Bush and the IMF
have a plan to make sure
that poor countries will remain under its control
even if they don't owe money to the IMF.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An analysis of why Bush is losing the war in Iraq.
The writer's conclusion is that the Bush forces must remain in Iraq for many years until they crush the country, but that is not the only option. They could end the oppression and cut the losses (both American and Iraqi losses).
The Iraqi resistance has not been stopped by Palestine-style occupation measures in Baghdad.
Cruel as the Taliban were to women, at least they put an end to rape.
The warlords that now control Afghanistan are the same ones that allowed
their troops to rape as
standard practice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Global warming has led to large forest fires in Siberia. Loggers,
taking advantage of a government policy that allows logging where there
has been a fire, are contributing too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime
has a similar policy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Here's an explanation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A participant in an Israeli solidarity protest for Palestinians reports on the police countermeasures.
The proposed EU constitution was rejected by France, which
means it is "dead"--for the moment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I urged voters to vote against the proposed constitution because it is undemocratic and privileges business over humans rights, citizens' interests, and public services. All the pro-business "free trade" treaties were included directly as parts of the constitution--which was set up to be nearly impossible to amend.
Europeans should not accept a constitution for a united Europe that fails to establish true democracy.
Tuna are being overfished in the Mediterranean, driven by the demand
for sushi.
So the tuna are being driven towards extinction.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Rand's eutopian vision of a Palestine at peace with Israel
seems to be offering hope. All it would take is peace--and money
that the US has available.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Indigenous Leaders Say World Bank Should Take Its Own Advice
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Ideological True Believers at the World Bank--and
the results of their work.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Ethiopian government seems to be suppressing the real result
of the hotly contested election there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bolivia is moving towards increased taxes on oil and natural gas exports,
but much of the people are demanding nationalization.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
My friends in Bolivia told me that the "popular" pressure in Santa Cruz for "autonomy" comes from the wealthy--they hire people to lead protests, then force their employees to participate on threat of being fired. However, there is also a vagueness about what "autonomy" means. To some, it means having an elected governor for the province; but the goal that lurks behind is to stop the central government from imposing taxes on businesses in that state--for instance, taxes on extraction of oil and natural gas.
Colombia plans to spray broad-spectrum herbicide in nature reserves.
The stated purpose is to kill coca and marijuana plants, but it can
easily harm other plants, or animals.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This campaign won't have much effect on drug plant production, but it could cause the extinction of other species.
A purely theoretical move towards democracy by Egypt's President
Mubarak
highlights how tyrannical his regime really is.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A US army general was demoted and discharged, apparently because he disagreed with officials' policies--but they won't admit it.
This is part of the Bush regime's War on Integrity. Whoever serves Bush must be prepared to do whatever Bush wants, while pretending not to do it.
Uri Avnery:
make a monkey out of
most Israelis?
Bush provides funds to the Palestinian Authority and
says Israel must stop expanding settlements.
This is a refreshing surprise. I hope he means it.
The remaining political prisoners in Chile are on hunger strike,
demanding abolition of the "anti-terrorist"
law that permits imprisonment
on political grounds.
This law was the result of the September 11 attacks, which killed
President Allende and installed a military dictatorship. This
was instigated by the US government.
Bush regime spending on "clean energy" is
a waste or a fraud,
mostly going towards new forms of coal-exhaust scrubbing technology
that don't work as well as the existing ones.
In Latin America, economic growth usually does no good for the poor.
Only special government attention enables the poor to gain any of the
economy's growth.
Logic shows that this article is mistaken when it says that further
economic growth is important for the poor. Effective government
programs to help the poor will work even if the total size of the
economy remains the same. Furthermore, in countries such as Bolivia
and Ecuador, which have oil or natural gas to sell, simply raising the
taxes on these exports will bring in the money to fund these programs.
"The only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi." (How the neocons use hatred to
manipulate people into war, so they can run off with the money.)
Gush Shalom ad: Fiasco of resettlement of Gaza settlers - a planned failure.
The Republicans are
destroying the separation of powers in the US government in their drive
for total power.
There is a
growing campaign to impeach Bush.
E. J. Dionne
condemns Bush's assault on media independence.
A previous note has a link to Greg Palast's article about Newsweek's
cave-in.
Amnesty International calls for foreign governments to
investigate and prosecute high US officials -- including Bush -- that have
supported torture.
Israeli troops
arrested Israelis who were peacefully joining Palestinians
under persistent attack by settlers.
The soldiers first threw stones at the protestors before arresting
them. When Palestinian youths throw stones at soldiers, the soldiers
often shoot and kill them, claiming their lives were endangered by the
stones. Did the soldiers endanger the lives of these protestors? If
so, they should be tried for attempted murder.
The Australian government
released a child prisoner who has spent her whole three years of life in
prison. And her mother.
However, this is not progress, since another child was born in prison the previous day.
Australia's High Court says that asylum-seekers can be kept in prison
for ever, as long as the purpose is not punitive. In other words, the
Australian government can keep you in prison for life, as long as it
says you have not done anything to deserve it.
If Karzai is serious about his demands to limit US military abuses in
Afghanistan,
he will have to push harder.
Amnesty International:
Guantanamo is the gulag of our time, and the prisoners of the US have been,
in effect, disappeared.
Here's the full
report on the Americas.
The proposal to ban photos in the New York City subways has been dropped.
This is one small victory for human rights over the phony War on Terror.
A compromise that avoided the showdown on Frist's "nuclear option"
involved
allowing three of Dubya's extremist judges onto appeals
courts
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The "Sustainable Forestry Initiative": a lumber industry "greenwash" campaign to disguise bad practices as good.
The UN representative in Afghanistan supports Karzai's demand for an independent investigation of torture by the US forces in Afghanistan.
The Iraqi resistance killed a government security chief, and other collaborators; but other bombs seem to be aimed at Shi'ite civilians.
Aside from disapproving morally of such atrocities, I also wonder what the motivation for them is. Are there Iraqi Sunnis who want to fight Iraqi Shi'ites as well as Bush? Isn't the latter a big enough enemy?
Amnesty International reports that human rights and rule of law are threatened all across the world, and the US government is primarily responsible.
Americans like to say that the USA is number one. Nowadays that means public enemy number one.
Only half of the antiquities stolen from the National Museum of Iraq
have been found.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's war of lies has destroyed a large part of the history of the beginning of civilization. Perhaps that was intentional. Some of these artifacts date back to before 4004 BC. Perhaps Dubya's fanatical supporters wish to destroy the history of the true origin of civilization.
An EU study concludes that "free trade" is leading to greater
environmental damage--primarily in poor countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Free trade treaties transfer power from governments (which can be democratic) to business (which never tries to be democratic), and business typically uses this power to bully governments that dream of protecting the environment. (Or public health. Or education. Or the general standard of living. Or anything that benefits the public in general.) The only real solution is to roll back the free trade treaties. To judge the globalization of business power in narrow terms of the efficiency of production is a fundamental mistake.
The new film "The Power of Nightmares" exposes how the Bush and Blair
regimes
exaggerate the danger of terrorism as a form of political manipulation.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Canada blocked Africa's top anti-bio-patents scholar--the
representative of the Ethiopean government--from attending a UN
conference which had invited him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
In response to worldwide protests, Canada ultimately gave him a visa,
so late that he can only make it to the last day of the conference.
Canada blocked other activists from attending the conference too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Canadian government is acting like the puppet of the biotech companies.
Christian fanatics who don't recognize evolution are making a big push
for US schools to teach divine creation (or variants dressed up in
scientific guise) as an "alternative theory".
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide because of debts they can't pay.
Similar policies in the US led to the farm foreclosures of the 80s.
They were led into these debts by programs sponsored by their own government and foreign institutions, programs inspired by neoliberal ideology and encouraged by international organizations. In my view, that means they are not responsible for the debts--the institutions that encouraged them are responsible.
US Faces Questions over 'Kidnappings' in Europe.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush will never cooperate with holding anyone responsible for his regime's abuses; European states should protect their citizens and residents by punishing the US government directly, and by keeping its agents out.
A UK judge overturned a verdict of unlawful killing by the police.
When they make a mistake and kill someone,
they have near total impunity.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Compare this with the attitude taken towards political opposition (see another recent note) to see the double standard.
Over a million people have left the Chinese Communist Party recently,
and said so. After this became known, the Chinese government has
started persecuting some of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Delightful quotations from Richard Dawkins about evolution and atheism.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Australia has been aping the US, sending troops and police into
various other countries while taking over parts of their governments
and giving the Australian agents immunity from prosecution for
whatever they might do.
However, this has hit a snag in Papua New
Guinea's supreme court.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This "cooperation program" has been criticized as serving Australia more than Papua New Guinea.
New research shows stem cells can be made for anyone, using donated
eggs. Most likely we will soon be able to cure various diseases with
the help of these methods--
if religious fanatics don't stop us.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
These religious fanatics say they value "human life", but they only care about you before you're born. After that, they don't care if you die.
Many Israelis were arrested when they peacefully protested
the Hebron settlers who have built themselves a road across
Palestinians' lands.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An MPP victory -- marijuana will remain legal in Alaska
Upwards of 500 protestors were shot and killed in Uzbekistan, but the government refuses to admit it.
The German government deported a known Falun-gong practitioner to
China,
where he was imprisoned without trial. The court refused to
pay attention to the predictable danger he faced if sent back.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Governments under pressure to reduce immigration often deport refugees who face persecution. They disregard the truth in order to be tough.
Man-made damage to biodiversity
threatens to keep humans in poverty too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A principal factor in this harm is human overpopulation. Another major factor is the domination of the US by business interests that are too short-sighted to practice conservation.
Monsanto did a study that found a particularly genetically-modified
corn variety
causes developmental abnormalities in rats.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
What did Monsanto do with this information? They kept it secret so they could sell the seeds anyway.
The FBI says "eco-militants" who don't even try to kill anyone are the
"main terrorist threat". In effect, they have admitted that they have
been exaggerating the danger from Al Qa'ida all along.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
It is an exaggeration and an injustice to apply the term "terrorist" for people who damage property but always try, as a matter of principle, to avoid causing injuries to persons. Yes, it is possible that some day they might slip up and injure some innocent person. In this, they resemble the police, who frequently injure and even kill innocent persons. When that happens, they just say "oops, mistakes happen"--if they do even that much. I see a double standard here.
Jared Diamond speaks on why societies collapse, and what it means for ours.
Policeman frames someone from a minority group--that's not news.
Second policeman lies to support the first--that's not news.
Policeman caught on tape doing it, and discredited--that's news.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
It is heartening to see a judge recognize and condemn police abuse, for once. But most of the time there is no such a video (the cops don't leave this to chance--they often arrest people who are making videos, or drive them away.) How do we solve the problem when there is no recording?
Bush reluctantly arrested an anti-Castro terrorist
who worked for the
CIA and is accused of putting a bomb on an air liner.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A Swedish report says that it was the Swedish government that decided to deport two Egyptians to Egypt. The CIA just helped out by transporting them. But it seems to me that something is wrong in deporting someone before he can file an appeal--and in deporting someone to a country where he will be tortured.
Shouldn't it be just as much a crime for police to let others abuse prisoners in custody as it is for the police to do so themselves?
Japan's resurgent militarism is visible in the adoption of a national holiday named after Emperor Hirohito.
Cutting down the Amazon rainforest at 10000 sq miles a year, just to
grow soybeans to feed cattle.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who tried to reveal gross
deriliction in regard to the threat of terrorist attacks, saw her
appeal rejected without any stated reason, based on
arguments kept secret from her lawyers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The most patriotic thing that Sibel Edmonds could do now is to flee to another country, where she will be free to tell Americans what she knows.
Police violently attacked a protest march of 15,000 Brazilians
complaining about
Lula's failure to help the poor.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The latest Star Wars movie turned out, by coincidence, to be
a parable about Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A hearing for the Critical Art Ensemble defendants
shows just
how far the Bush regime is willing to twist the law
when it wants to attack someone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush took advantage of the "Koran dunking" report to establish
a double standard for major US media: stories that criticize
Bush need more careful support than stories that support Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The reporter has been blamed for not dotting all his i's, while Bush conceals the evidence that would conclusively show the truth (or, just possibly, the error) of the story.
Hirsi Ali, who campaigns against Islamic oppression of women, now faces death threats from religious fanatics. But she doesn't let this silence her.
Cuban Terrorist
Tests Bush Administration's Convictions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The New Zealand government has authorized internet
filtering software for schools which is controled by religious extremists
in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
In Uzbekistan,
troops shot wounded protestors to finish them off.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
It wasn't long ago that Bliar fired the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan
for criticizing tyrannical practices such as torture. Bliar did not
want his ally to be criticized. Now that the citizens are rising up
against their tyrannical government, Bliar finds it convenient
to change his tune.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I wonder if this criticism will go beyond words. It is interesting to compare Bliar's treatment of Uzbekistan with his treatment of Iraq.
Conclusive proof that Bush decided to attack Iraq months before, that he never intended to let UN weapons inspectors do their job, and that he was lying all the way through.
You'd expect US journalists to jump for this scandal, but they ignore it.
"Conspiracy theory" on 9/11 is now present in a major newspaper--in the UK.
Afghan President Karzai, reflecting popular feeling, demanded a veto over US military operations, and the return of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo.
UK MP Galloway, who was kicked out of Bliar's Labour party and won election from his own new party, has come out fighting against Bush regime accusations that he was bribed by Saddam Hussein. He says the charges are based on forgery.
Bill Moyers on US media (including public TV): "instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news."
I used to support public radio regularly, until I noticed they had started broadcasting commercials. (They don't admit that these are commercials; they have made up an excuse to call them something else.) The presence of these commercials indicates the power that businesses have over what is broadcast, and the refusal to admit what they are testifies to a dishonest world view.
It was around the same time that I noticed that there were generally more critical of Democrats than Republicans.
The Bush regime is attacking the new president of Ecuador for merely
suggesting that maybe Ecuadorians should get some of the money from
the high oil prices. Bush wants this windfall to go to his buddies,
the oil companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I think this president is too timid. He should do what Chavez did, what Bolivia seems to be doing: unilaterally increase the share that the oil companies have to pay to the government. That is what Ecuadorians want.
Maybe these countries could sign a mutual assistance treaty that obliges all of them to tax all oil and natural gas at 50%.
Iraqi religious extremists are killing barbers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 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 foreign 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. (Its veneer of democracy should not fool anyone.)
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 is in charge.
Desertion in the US military is increasing.
Global warming will cause
big increases in the water
in some rivers, and big decreases in others.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Mayors of 130 US cities are together deciding to comply with the Kyoto
treaty to reduce global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
US companies that make food that's bad for people's health
regularly donate to the organizations that claim to work for
public health, corrupting them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian violence has gone way down--there were
zero "terror alerts"
in Israel in a recent week--but Israeli violence against Palestinians
continues to rise.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A woman visiting Dubai was
threatened with years in prison because she
had taken painkillers before her trip. Don't go to Dubai!
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
Blair had a family of Mongolian refuguees, loved by their British
community, deported in a hurry, too fast for anyone to notice. The
father faces danger of persecution in Mongolia for his previous
political activity there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
LA police shut down a large art show which featured
parodical use of corporate logos.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with the gallery owner.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Florida wants to
cut off health care for a crippled
young girl who will be helpless without it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Why the difference from Terry Schiavo? Perhaps because this girl is conscious--or perhaps because here the state is paying the bill.
A refugee from Kashmir in Australia faces a life of imprisonment for
no crime,
caught between two hostile governments.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The anti-empire TV network that was being discussed in Venezuela in December is now starting.
This article highlights the response of Chavez opponents, and shows how they strain to put him in a bad light. If they can't accuse him of doing anything bad, they talk about what they imagine he "might" do. (That is something he cannot possibly disprove.) But the worst of their speculations is nothing compared to what the Chavez opponents, who control all the private TV channels in Venezuela, have already done.
I'm pleased to see the comparison with Al Jazeera, since that's the model I argued for in the meeting in December. Others wanted to follow a more explicitly ideological vision, which I think would not have much influence. If my words had anything to do with this, I will feel really proud.
Gas Issue Ignites Bolivia Once Again.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The gas underground in Bolivia will only get more valuable as time goes by. Someone will be willing to pay to extract it, even with 50% tax. If these oil companies won't, China will. Bolivia should tell these companies that they are welcome to buzz off.
Christian extremists have been imposing their power in the Air Force Academy since the 70s, at least.
The US-supported dictatorship in Uzbekistan is facing an uprising, after troops shot wildly at protestors.
Horror of USA's Depleted Uranium in Iraq Threatens World
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinians
keeps increasing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush has recruited insiders and representatives of large monopolistic corporations to draw up ideas for changes in anti-trust law.
Coming from a regime that lets the polluters decide clean air criteria, this is no surprise.
Uri Avnery: Death of a Myth--"the beautiful Eretz Israel".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Australia's general cruelty towards people seeking asylum there
periodically results cases of extreme cruelty, such as the 3-year-old
girl who was born in prison and has no prospect of getting out.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
"Mandatory detention" is an interesting euphemism for "prison". The Australian government surely has some pedantic excuse to pretend that the place she is kept is not a prison. But I'm sure it looks, feels, smells and tastes like a prison.
The employees at a Wall-Mart in Quebec unionized.
Wall-Mart closed the store.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Very sad news:
the US is moving close to imposing machine-readable
national ID cards (for all practical purposes).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Bluefin tuna population in the western Atlantic has gone
down 80%
since the 1970s, due to overfishing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
When bankers were offered an "acceptable risk calculator", an industry
standard to determine for
how many deaths are acceptable for a large
profit, they jumped for the idea.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
They had been tricked by those great hoaxers, the Yes Men.
The Yes Men also announced, on behalf of Dow, that Dow
would pay to clean up the poison in Bhopal that continues
to kill the people there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Religious fanatics in Kansas are making another attempt
to
sabotage teaching of evolution there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Evolution is what makes biology make sense. To understand aspects of biology without recognizing the role of evolution in producing them is as hopeless as trying to understand aspects of comparative religion without recognizing the role played by the concept of a deity in producing them.
Highlighting the injustice of ASBOs in the UK, police have applied this all-purpose bullying policy to a quadraplegic teenage boy.
I'm sure the police are embarrassed for having been caught threatening a cripple in this way. They will surely say, "It was a mistake to apply this policy to him. Everyone makes mistakes." However, this instance is just the tip of an iceberg of injustice. What about the other boys who were caught "chatting" near some stores--should that be treated as a crime? Is it right for anyone, even someone with healthy arms and legs, to be threatened with imprisonment if he holds another conversation there?
After Philippine-born Australian citizen Vivian Solon was attacked and
wounded, she was in a confused state. The Australian government
deported her in a hurry. Her family had no idea what had happened to
her, and she was reported missing. In 2003, an Australian government
agency
realized the mistake, and did nothing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
She was just recently located in the Philippines.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Although mistakes and confusion played a role in these specific events, they are also the result of the general Australian government policy of being cruel and callous to refugees. The ruling party gets votes by demonizing them and showing how nasty it can be. For instance, it intercepts ships full of refugees and does not let them land.
In an election campaign a few years ago, it published photos of refugees throwing their children off a ship, into the ocean, saying "They were ready to kill their own children to get to Australia--what nasty people!" Only after the election did the Australian naval officers on the surrounding Australian ships get a chance inform the public that the refugees' ship was already sinking.
Thousands of students protested against the US in Afghanistan, and one
of the protests turned violent (apparently due to extremists).
Troops shot at the protestors.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
If you shoot people's children, it tends to make them hate you. So I think that the Afghan government emplaced by the US will find itself facing increasing opposition. Could this have been avoided if Bush had spent more money on rebuilding Afghanistan, instead of invading a source of oil? We cannot be sure, but it would have been wise to try.
These protests were sparked by reports that guards in Guantanamo put copies of the Koran in a toilet. Apparently they are religious nuts, more concerned about the Koran than about torturing mere people.
If the guards really did this, it is one of the few things they have done which I would not myself criticize. The Koran is just a book. If police can get useful information from someone by putting a book in a toilet, I have no objections. I don't care if it's the Koran, the Bible, the Mahabharata, or even the GNU Emacs Manual. It's just a book, and people can print more copies.
But that should not distract us from the real issues of Guantanamo rights. Even if these protestors have seized on a foolish reason to condemn the treatement of prisoners there, that doesn't excuse the real wrongs. Those prisoners are facing life in prison without trial, and some may face execution after a sham trial. And they have been tortured. The US government cannot defend its actions by pointing to the foolishness of the present complaint.
Real wages in the US are
falling at the fastest rate in 14 years.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Planned mergers of giant telecommunications companies
would nearly wipe out competition in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Experts: Iraq Verges on Civil War.
And:
even the Bush's Iraqi police blame the Bush forces
for the violence in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Theocratic Republican leaders, including senators and congressmen,
are threatening violence against judges.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
US troops and civilian personnel in Colombia sell arms to murderers,
traffic drugs, and occasionally kill, all with impunity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The mayor of Spokane, who has fought long and hard against gay rights,
has been outed as secretly gay.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
He was attacking other gays as a callous, cynical act to further his own career. Such a man would have a great future in US politics if it were not known that he is gay.
Human Rights Watch says, to send a prisoner to Egypt is tantamount
to having him tortured. Over 60 prisoners are known to have been
sent there, but probably there have been many more.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
These Islamists are religious fanatics, but that's no excuse for the religious fanatics in the White House to have them tortured.
Former ministers are fleeing Iraq--perhaps because they are
afraid of being accused of corruption (which they are probably guilty of),
perhaps because they're afraid of the resistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Freedom of the press is endangered in Colombia by
widespread
attacks on journalists who report news that irritates
the paramilitaries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
In Nepal, some political leaders have been released from prison,
and phones have been turned back on,
but basic freedoms are still denied.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi resistance has stepped up attacks, often targeting Iraqis
that fight on Bush's side. However, the hostilities between the
groups are taking Iraq further towards civil war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Anger at Bliar wasn't enough to make Labour lose the election, but
with its decreased majority it will have trouble driving through his
nastiest policies. Bliar himself may also have to go.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Government agents in Burundi have been
convicted of murdering
an investigator sent by WHO to track diverted funds.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
As massacres continue in Darfur, under the support of the government of Sudan, the response is inadequate.
A suggestion for Iraq: Operation Golden Shower.
A friend commented thus: What White House or Congress would ever approve a plan to short stop the money in Iraq before it, er, trickles down to the Carlyle Group?
Germany is turning to human-powered pedicabs to reduce urban
pollution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Expect to see more of this as gasoline gets more expensive, which it will probably do from now on (except for a possible temporary reduction between now and 2010).
Global warming is already
interfering with the circulation of water in
the Atlantic--the Gulf Stream that takes warm water from South America
to Europe, and the deep water "conveyor" that takes cold water back
south.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, the CO2 that doesn't go into the atmosphere and cause
warming instead
goes into the ocean and makes it more acidic. This
endangers many ocean species.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
No one knows how close we are to a climate disaster, but we keep finding that we've crossed major milestones on the way there.
Gaza settlers will be offered new towns in Israel to convince them to leave peacefully.
This proposal has been controversial because Nitzanim is a protected natural area. It would be better to find another place. But if this plan enables the withdrawal to occur, I think it is good overall.
Police in Bogota, Colombia, attacked a young protestor for no
particular reason, and beat him so badly that he died from his
injuries.
Now they are lying about it (just like police).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Toxic chemicals are causing an explosion of cancer.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A leaked UK memo, written 8 months before the invasion, proves that
Bush and Bliar had
already decided to start a war, and that "the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading
Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
For another article, plus a copy of the memo, see
here.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli police disguised as Palestinians infiltrated a nonviolent
protest and
tried to make it turn violent. They started throwing
stones, which provided the excuse for other police to arrest the real
protestors. This was all caught on video, providing conclusive proof
of what happened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinians arrested--for asking the provocateurs not to throw stones--are still in custody.
Israelis protested in Tel Aviv after their soldiers shot two Palestinian children.
Republicans want to impose monitoring and controls on
university courses.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
US auto companies are getting punished for their years of selling
overlarge oil-wasting vehicles. They have actively opposed all plans
to increase fuel efficiency--and Bush has supported them all the way.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
8% of Americans have auto-immune diseases, and man-made toxins in the environment are a large part of the cause.
Since mercury is one of the causes it is relevant to mention that Bush has done his best to prevent the EPA from reducing mercury pollution.
Police harassed a woman at an Earth Day rally in Modesto, California, claiming it was illegal for her to hand out flyers in the park where the rally was occuring.
Police regularly use their arbitrary power to stop people from lawful participation in democracy. They don't care that it is lawful, they stop it anyway. By the time people go to court about it, it is too late to make a difference: the police already achieved their goal.
For police to interfere with lawful political activity should be a crime carrying a month of mandatory jail time. Police might rein in their lawlessness when they start seeing jail from the other side.
A secret Bush forces report shows the Iraqi resistance is not
weakening, belying what Bush tells the public. However, many of the
victims of the attacks are Iraqi civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Germany is pressuring the US to remove its nuclear missiles which remain in Germany since the Cold War.
By funding medical research directly,
instead of paying drug companies
the monopoly prices caused by drug patents, the US government could
save $110 billion annually on Medicare alone. (The US public would
save even more, and so would the rest of the world.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A TV station in Afghanistan is spreading Western mores.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bliar hid the doubts about legality of attacking Iraq even from his
own cabinet, thus
manipulating them into a decision that he had chosen
in advance.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
(This isn't the best article to explain what happened, but it's the one I have a URL for.)
The Bush forces are trying to blame a few soldiers, plus the prison
commander, for the torture at Abu Ghraib.
But torture has been
widespread in the Bush forces, so it can't be the fault only of people
stationed at Abu Ghraib. And it cannot be unrelated the support for
torture that comes directy from Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
A large area of Ecuador was been
poisoned permanently by
Texaco.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The megacorporations promise benefits from their "investment", but often deliver only suffering.
Conservative legislators in Kuwait have
blocked a proposal
to let women vote.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The US Air Force Academy is controlled by theocratic officers who use their office to bully cadets to become Christian extremists.
The resemblance between military training and religious cults is nothing new. They use similar methods to try to break a person's spirit so they can rewrite him as they wish. However, it is something new that the two are merging in the US military.
Representative DeLay has cunningly used his own charity as a way
to disguise selling influence to corporations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Berlusconi personally rewrote the Italian report about the attack on
Giulia Sgrena's car, to avoid embarrassing Bush with the truth.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Industrial progress rests largely
on the shoulders of publicly-funded
R&D. Companies add a little more and then get complete monopolies
in the form of patents.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Arguing that military spending has turned the US partially into a
command economy, much like the one that failed in the Soviet Union.
(So no wonder it is doing so badly.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I think the basic idea is true to an extent, but the specific points need to be checked carefully. For instance, if the overall effect of military spending is to distort the US economy and control the social sciences, it doesn't necessarily follow that DoD-support university research in physical sciences and computing was harmful.
Bliar made a secret decision to build a
replacement for the Trident
nuclear missile, despite saying that the decision would be made later.
We see a lie, and a coverup.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
During the Cold War, it made sense to have a nuclear deterrent; there was an enemy to deter. It doesn't make much sense for the UK now.
I don't think the UK's nuclear submarines are very dangerous directly; I worry that the theocrats in the US will start a nuclear war as fulfillment of their prophesies, but I don't think the UK will do so. However, it undermines the efforts to prevent proliferation, and that can be much more dangerous.
The real cost of burning coal.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinian Authority says it is prepared to fight the few
militant groups that threaten to cause trouble during the planned
Israeli withdrawal of some of the settlements.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This makes sense as a strategy for the while. Most of the militant groups support a cease fire now, which means there are only a few that they would have to fight.
However, doing this now may make it harder to resist later demands to attack all the militants, while Israeli violence proceeds unchecked. As long as Israelis continue stealing the Palestinians' land, destroying their olive trees, poisoning their animals, knocking down their houses, arresting them on the way home from the hospital and denying them medical care, etc., while using provocateurs as an excuse to attack peaceful protests, Israel is not entitled to criticize Palestinians for fighting back.
Florida has blocked a 13-year-old girl from getting an abortion, in effect intending to force her to have a baby.
The Bush forces have decided that the soldiers that shot at Giulia Sgrena's car in Baghdad Airport are innocent. Italians refuse to accept this, and even the Italian government is about to accuse Bush of a cover-up.
The truth about Bush is slowly percolating through the world's people, and eventually he will be unable to keep up the pretense.
Ecuadorians have chased out one president, but they are
not ready to
accept the next one either. He has resisted Bush just a little,
but doesn't have the courage to resist very much.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Ecuador should cancel its debt and its contracts with the US. If Bush gets mad, they can sell their oil somewhere else.
Railroad privatization in the UK has been a
failure--for everyone
except the lucky train owners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery reports on the different treatment that settlers
and peace activists receive from the Israeli government when
they protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Another Labour MP has
joined the Liberal Democrats, urging voters to "Give Mr
Blair a bloody nose".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli settlers in Palestine are
poisoning the Palestinians' sheep.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-19 because the old link was broken.]
In many areas, the settlers regularly harrass and even shoot Palestinians nearby.
Bliar's dishonesty about Iraq has been conclusively proved.
The specific lie Bliar has been caught in is his claim about what legal advice he received. In fact, it said that attacking Iraq would comply with international law only given clear, strong evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Bliar pressured his advisor into changing his advice by telling him there was conclusive evidence of that,
We know that this claim was based on phony evidence, which was probably the result of pressure that Bush and Bliar exerted in that direction.
The initial advice was hidden and Bliar pretended never to have received it.
The UK brought
criminal charges against a woman for not calling an ambulance after her
husband, who was incurably ill and had
suffered for years, took an overdose of pills. (All she did was keep him
company while he achieved the goal of ending his pain.) The jury
acquitted her.
[References updated on 2018-04-29 because the old links were broken.]
The Vietnam War ended 30 years ago, but the weapons that the US
used are still killing Vietnamese.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi Sunnis may have killed
50 Shi'ite hostages--or maybe not.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Many new species are discovered each year in Borneo's rain forest.
Many are in danger of extinction as these forests are cut down.
Probably many will be extinct before they are observed.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli occupation forces arrested a Palestinian with meningitis, preventing him from continuing his treatment.
Global warming
threatens world agriculture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
In 1990, police in Wales decided to
"solve" a murder by framing
the usual suspects. Now some of them are facing prosecution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
This sort of dishonesty happens frequently, but only rarely is there clear proof to expose it. Most of the time the police get away with their testilying.
Bush and the Republicans are dropping in popularity,
and many oppose their latest bullying tactics.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
However, they will have plenty of chance to blur the issues before the next election. And they can always rig the vote count again.
We all knew Blair was lying about Iraq, but due to his obfuscation
we could not pin it down. Now a leaked document
proves he lied about the advice he got over whether invading Iraq would
violate international law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
It is clear that Bliar made a decision to attack and generated excuses for it. Kick this bum out!
A Mexican environmentalist is in jail for denouncing the
killing of dolphins.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A UN inspector who exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan has
been fired under US pressure, as part of Bush's War on Integrity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Lethal injections used for US executions
could be death by torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
However, even humane killing of prisoners cannot be justified.
Sharon is ready to defy Bush's
feeble attempts to restrain the
increase of settlements in Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, the Israeli army is forcing more Palestinians to leave
their homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Republican party has two groups of supporters:
theocratic
Christians and business conservatives. Now they are at odds about the
plan to abolish filibusters on judicial appointments.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An Argentine officer who participated in murdering prisoners has been
convicted in Spain of
crimes against humanity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Spanish courts can punish crimes against humanity no matter
where they were committed.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-21 because the old link was broken.]
Spain should put Bush on trial next.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Republican Party is now controlled by Christian fanatics who are set on abolishing all opposition and all secular society. It has become the party of theocracy.
For full details, and careful documentation, see this site.
These churches use the methods developed by cults in the 70s and 80s.
Uri Avnery on the continued harrassment of Mordechai Vanunu.
Bush is aiming to get the power to eliminate any Federal agency,
by appointing his own friends to vote on the question.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's record includes (1) staffing the Texas board of clemency with people who would carry out his wishes while denying him responsibility for them, and (2) dishonestly undermining all the agencies that protect the environment. To suppose he would staff the "sunset board" with people ready to abolish those agencies is not a leap of faith.
Here's a list of Federal agencies that the Texas Republican Party said it wants to abolish.
Ecuador's president, who broke promises in order to cater to the US,
has been removed from office after a wave of popular outrage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
I hope the new president learns the right lesson and stands up to the empire.
The Burmese army appears to have used chemical weapons against Karen rebels.
Groping Arnold has made most of California hate him.
Perhaps he should switch to making movies about what he would do as governor. In those movies, everyone would admire him.
The Israeli soldiers who killed three Arab boys playing football were
intentionally shooting to kill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The Galapagos Islands are in trouble from a human
population explosion.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Eradicating goats was worth a few million dollars, since the result is permanent. If the human fishing population could be moved out permanently for a few million dollars, that would also be worth the expense. However, paying them every year not to fish while their numbers increase would be like trying to protect native vegetation by feeding the goats.
Here's an idea for reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine: democratically elect a joint representative body to negotiate it.
I have some disagreements with specific points in the plan. I disagree with the idea of adding "religious, civil society, community and business leaders" to the elected representatives. This is undemocratic because it would mean that people associated with religious groups, business, or community activities get represented more than once. Such leaders should have to run for election like everyone else.
(Also, the Palestinian Authority is democratically elected now.)
Arundhati Roy:
Public Power in the Age of Empire.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
An Arab family chased out of its home in Hebron by fanatical settlers has returned, protected by Israeli soldiers.
These settlers should be shot with tranquiliser darts and released in the wild, far from the abode of civilized people. But I've read that Sharon has recently insisted on maintaining them in Hebron where they regularly harrass and attack Palestinians.
Iraq is full of landmines, but clearing them has become slower
since Bush moved in.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
A UN agency has begun examining
the issue of caste discrimination in India.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Germany's chancellor suggests boycotting
companies that have fired lots of workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The industry response reflects the basic view of business executives that the public should bend over backwards to help business, but business need not do the converse.
The Bush forces do count Iraqi civilians they kill.
They have repeatedly claimed that they do not,
but this is apparently yet another
lie.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
The new Pope thinks it is ok for Catholics to disagree with the Pope
about killing, if the killing they support is capital punishment or
war. Only
abortion and euthanasia are completely unacceptable to support.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-29 because the old link was broken.]
Eels in Europe are being
driven close to extinction.
Exxon-Mobil funds 40 different groups to create false doubt about
global warming.
Some of the same organizations have also been funded by Microsoft to
create an image of public dissatisfaction with free software.
Iraqi Sunnis have taken Shi'ites hostage and threaten to kill them.
This moves Iraq closer to civil war.
I believe Bush wants such a civil war, since divide-and-rule is the
only way he can make the conquest succeed. He hopes that Shi'ites will
be the ones to destroy the resistance of the Sunnis.
Iraqi Shi'ites are talking about
prosecuting everyone involved
in wrongdoing during Saddam Hussein's regime. Bush doesn't like this.
The Bush regime is eliminating an
annual summary of global terrorism because the results were not going to be
favorable.
I suspect that this report was subject to political bias anyway. I
suspect that state-sponsored terrorism carried out by the Bush regime
and its allies was generally omitted. If someone wants to check that,
I will update this note.
Piercing the peer-to-peer myths: An examination of the
Canadian experience.
The European Commission's policy
treats the environment with contempt.
The Hundred Days of Abu Mazen
How Three Firms Came to Rule the World [of food]...Food Central.
People often wonder, "Doesn't Bush know he's running the country into
the ground?" Bush is good at being intentionally blind, but I don't
think Cheney is a fool.
Here's a proposed explanation for why Bush
and his clique would do this intenionally.
A small bipartisan initiative to make the House Ethics Committee
function again.
Bush claims "the tide is turning" in Iraq.
It would be a tragedy if he gets away with conquering that country,
butchering its citizens, and stealing its wealth. But he may not be right:
Iraqi Resistance Stages Another Large-Scale Assault
There is also a sign of resistance from the elected "government" of
Iraq. Rumsfeld warned the elected "leaders" not to replace the Bush
toadies that run some Iraqi ministries.
However, they can't possibly gain the loyalty of Iraqis
unless they start to resist the universally-hated occupation.
Meanwhile, more countries are pulling their troops out.
In the UK, "anti-social behavior orders" have become an
all-purpose
excuse to imprison people without trial for activities that are not
punishable with imprisonment--or are not crimes at all.
The article doesn't mention it, but "engaging in political protest" is also
a common occasion for ASBOs.
The Gaza pullout is a
smoke screen for step-by-step ethnic cleansing in
the West Bank.
What sort of world are supermarket subservience cards leading to?
Police officers harrassing a political activist--that's not news.
Police officers lying, stealing, framing the activist--that's not
news. Activist suing and getting them fired,
that's news!
Congress is rushing headlong into new censorship for radio
and television.
Two Bush cronies, with a long history of corruption with Dubya. have
been accused of racketeering. However, Bush himself so far seems to
be getting away with his share of the booty.
An art auction is planned to support US dissidents in the Critical Art
Ensemble, facing
fabricated criminal charges.
Turkish police killed a 12-year-old Kurdish boy from short rage, then
left a rifle next to his body and called him a "terrorist".
(He was too small to even carry such a rifle.)
DeLay's Position on Tort Reform Was 'For Sale'.
(And other issues too.)
The practice of feeding antibiotics to chickens produced
drug-resistant
bacteria that are now found in a large fraction of the chicken sold in US
markets.
And even though the practice has been ended, the bacteria continue
to get into the chickens.
Perhaps the factories that formerly used antibiotics should be
condemned and burned.
The thugs that Bush used to drive Aristide out of Haiti are shooting
at each other now.
Haiti under Bush influence is a land of murder. Refugees trying to
flee to the US, with valid passports and visa, are denied asylum and
imprisoned. One was murdered by denying him his medicine.
It was Bush that arranged to drive Aristide out.
He's guilty of murder for each one of these deaths.
A high school principal was arrested, and accused of
bogus crimes, for
supporting a student that a policeman was improperly trying to arrest.
Recently the charges were dropped, and the principal is back at work.
(I made no link to that article because it is on a site that is not
generally accessible.) The prestige of the social role of school
principal surely helped bring this about. If you, rather than a
principal, had been falsely accused, you would not find it so easily
to overcome the lies.
New Japanese school textbooks are whitewashing Japan's crimes in World
War II. This has sparked protests in Korea and China.
If the US had an honest self-respecting government, it would join
the protests.
Peaceful protestors against military recruitment at the City College
of New York were attacked violently by police.
The police are like Dr Jekyll--much of the time, they actually
do protect and help citizens, but when their vicious side takes over,
they turn into something between a street gang and a mafia.
Christians in North Korea are
sent to prison camps where they
are tortured.
Soot, particles of unburnt carbon, is contributing to melting
the Arctic ice cap.
Uri Avnery: the Gaza settlers wagered on their future,
so we need not
pity them for having to leave.
A call to defy
corporate domination.
As Israel honors Major Plagge, a German officer who saved Jews from
extermination, we should consider carefully what his lesson
means today.
It is easy to recognize evil in the forms it took in the recent past,
with the benefit of hindsight. If someone tries to organize a
Nazi-style genocide campaign today, many people would recognize it as
such and oppose it.
But history does not repeat itself in detail. It is often harder to
recognize evil in today's different forms, harder to see what it is
that we must do to "resist being sucked into the vortex of evil" as
evil appears today. Would today's equivalent of Plagge be someone who
helps people escape from torture in Guantanamo?
The World Bank is planning a
big dam in Laos. The people living in the area to be flooded are unlikely
to have their lives restored, and rare animals living in the area will be
threatened.
Charges were dropped against a Bush forces soldier
accused of murdering an Iraqi civilian.
It is hard to restrain an occupying army from crimes against
civilians; Iraqis can expect to be shot with impunity by soldiers
until the occupation is over.
Rio de Janeiro police went on a murder spree, and shot 30 people.
The Bush regime asked the USPS to eliminate
anonymous postal mail. The USPS, to its credit, refused.
This attack on your freedom was consistent with the Bush regime's
policy of total surveillance on communication and travel.
They want to know where everyone goes, and what everyone says.
What stores are really doing with their "discount cards": discriminating
among their customers. For instance, they can
raise the price for you but not for your neighbor.
The UN Security Council called for prosecution in the International
Criminal Court of those who organized mass murder in the Sudan.
Now the challenge is to get the government of Sudan to hand them over.
Leaders of indigenous people in Brazil are being frequently murdered.
It is done by the henchmen of rich people who want to cut down their
forests.
Corporations killed our
commons.
The US corporate media, and corporate government, are using the
pope's death as a PR
opportunity for religion, and for distraction.
Enforcement of US laws about lobbying is very
lax.
Uri Avnery: Jinn in
the ballot box.
Amnesty International report French police
frequently attack, even kill Arabs or Africans that they arrest. Even
witnesses who threaten to report their violence have been violently attacked,
and charged with fake crimes. Thanks to a range of excuses, the police are
never seriously punished.
Some Labour MPs are planning to use their opposition to the
war as the
basis for their campaigns for reelection. This highlights the
way the public in the UK has lost its trust for Bliar.
Another Labour MEP
joined the Liberal Democrats, denouncing Bliar's attacks on
civil liberties.
We don't call him Bliar merely for lying about Iraq. He cannot be
trusted on anything at all, since his primary domestic policy goal is
to abolish civil liberties. If the war, based on lies, enables some
Britons that Blair has been lying to them about everything, their
country may derive some benefit from it.
The big car companies sued California for trying to make them reduce CO2
emissions. They said they couldn't cope with such requirements.
But they backed down when Canada demanded the same thing--which proves
they were bluffing all along.
What happened here is that these companies have more power over the US
government than over the Canadian government. In the US, they figured
that their pet legislators and pet president would accept false
excuses as valid, so they could get away with their bluff.
Pope John Paul II:
a political obituary.
Sharon is
thumbing his nose at peace, and even at Bush, with
an announcement of a plan to expand settlements. Uri Avnery predicted
this.
See also
http://www.geocities.com/keller_adam/gazit.htm for commentary.
Meanwhile, Israel plans to set up
garbage dump in Palestinian territory that could poison an important water
supply. Either it's an attempt to make the land uninhabitable for
Palestinians, or it's simply insane.
A
thoughtful analysis of the Venezuelan Constitution and what
it means for Venezuela.
New Zealand seems to have a
system of imprisonment without trial for non-citziens, similar to what
Blair tried to do in the UK.
This has been applied to Algerian refugee, Ahmed Zaoui, an Islamist
who was elected to the legislature by the elections that were canceled
in a coup. After that he had to flee
for his life.
Zaoui has been hounded from country to country by accusations from the
military government. These accusations could be true, or they could
be lies, but they can't be taken on faith. As the site says: Free
Ahmed Zaoui--or give him a fair trial.
Rap musicians like to present an air of being anti-establishment, but
they shamelessly
sell advertising in their own performances, showing
that they are no better than the executives of the megacorporations.
Speaking of "artistic integrity", I'd say that any musician who turns
his work into a commercial has no such thing.
The Iraqi resistance attacked Abu Ghraib prison very effectively.
Attacking a strongpoint like this suggests that
the resistance is gaining strength.
If political parties still mean anything, Energy Security
could be the opportunity for the Democrats to protect the US' future.
However, I think that they won't do it, because the power of business
is too great. The Democrats can't win an election covered mainly by
the corporate media--even supposing the votes are counted--unless they
do what the megacorporations want, and on an issue like this it's
primarily the oil companies that exert their influence. What the oil
companies want--as we can see from what friend in the White House does
for them--is for us to burn up the world's remaining oil as fast as
possible.
Galapagos islands wildlife is
threatened by fishing. The fishing interests have a lot of power in the
government of Ecuador, through corruption.
This "cut it down, wipe it out, make me rich, then I'll move on"
attitude is a menace to humanity.
The propsoed EU Constitution was designed to privilege business rights
over citizens' rights, it is undemocratic, and it is nearly impossible
to amend.
See Quand l'Union Europene tue l'Europe, in www.urfig.org. (Sorry, I don't have it in
English.)
"Reforming" the US intelligence services under the control of people
such as Negroponte and Goss won't prevent them from
"failing" again, because it won't give them what they need so as to resist
telling Bush whatever he wants to hear. That requires integrity, and integrity
is precisely what the Bush regime will not tolerate.
Parasitic mites, invaders from other continents, are wiping out the
bees that polinate US fruit crops. Killer bees didn't turn out
to be a disaster, but these might be the end.
How the US media encouraged
atrocities in Falluja.
Spain is selling some
transport planes and Coast Guard ships to Venezuela. The Bush regime,
which fights Venezuela on behalf of the oil companies, criticized this.
When Zapatero defended this sale by saying that these planes and ships
have "no offensive capacity", he conceded too much. There is nothing
wrong with selling arms to Venezuela, since Venezuela is not likely to
use them to attack anyone. What people should worry about is selling
arms to the Bush regime.
What is would mean to crack down on crime (by corporations).
Bobby Fischer, arriving in Iceland,
criticizes the US and Israel in a perfectly lucid way. (A little more
harshly than I would.)
Other stories have given the impression he is crazy, but he doesn't
sound crazy here. Perhaps those stories were meant to unjustly
discredit him.
Zimbabwe's formerly excellent medical system is a shambles
as AIDS spreads and life expectancy falls to 33 years.
Settlers in Gaza are
are threatening to resist with violence rather than leave.
They went to Gaza for the express purpose of imposing their will on
the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. I hope they leave peacefully,
but if they start violence, I won't be sorry for them if they get hurt
in it.
However, I think what is happening is that they think the Israeli Army
won't have the stomach to confront them with force. This army, which
regularly shoots Palestinian children, will pretend to feel
humanitarian considerations when it faces the settlers.
A scientific report shows how widespread ecological degradation
imperils the survival of humanity and the rest of life.
In addition to the slow decline of natural resources on which we
depend, the strains create opportunities for various kinds of
catastrophic collapse. Meanwhile, Bush does his utmost to accelerate
the degradation.
US government scientists working on storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain
falsified data to make it
appear safer than it really is.
Such dishonesty is disgusting but I no longer find it shocking. What
does shock me is that a Bush regime official was honest enough to
reveal it. The usual Bush pattern is to deny any inconvenient
scientific facts, so I wonder why Bush didn't do so here.
Temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic are rising fast, and the ice
is disappearing fast. The danger is not limited to polar bears, and
to people who are cut off for months because they can't drive across
the ice. We're getting close to a rise in sea level that could swamp
coastal cities.
Discovery of new, even more horrible, Enron conversations.
(Gloating as fires threatened California's electric supply
is just the least of it.)
Illegal loggers who threaten murder against whoever opposes them
are
tearing down the Amazon rainforest. But President Lula,
far from trying to resist this, is building roads to help them.
You can
help Greenpeace campaign to stop the logging.
Comparing Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and France in regard to
national ID cards.
The Iraqi puppet government is arresting hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of
long-term foreign residents, making demands they cannot possibly meet.
Some of them have no other home to go to.
This is reminiscent of how Bush treated Arab foreigners in the US.
Protestors dared to march in Nepal, handing out flyers in favor of
democracy.
They were arrested.
Perchlorate pollution is poisonous, but unregulated, because
it comes from rocket fuel that the military uses.
Here's the executive summary of the NAS report.
Congressman DeLay participates in many forms of corruption.
And he doesn't hesitate to use his own power to prevent
his corruption from being punished.
Elected officials would not dare act like this if they expected
the voting public to have a chance to respond. DeLay can do it
because corporate control of the media is so effective that
he know's he's safe from public ire. In other words, because
democracy in the US is mostly fiction.
The Bush regime shows a peculiar lack of interest in pursuing
evidence of corruption in spending money in Iraq. In fact, it is
trying to prevent US courts from pursuing corruption cases involving
Bush forces spending there.
This does not surprise me, because I've believed all along that
funneling money to cronies is a major part of the motive for war. I'm
not surprised either that the Pentagon has dragged its feet on
appointing auditors. They would spoil the party.
A military tribunal said Kurnaz, in Guantanamo, was a terrorist. But
the evidence they looked at is now declassified, and it shows they had
no reason for that conclusion.
So why is Kurnaz still a prisoner? Because of reluctance to admit a
mistake? Because of a "bureaucratic trap"? Both occurrences are
common, and this is why punishment without trial threatens everyone's
freedom.
Bush opposes a plan to block the commerce in illegally logged wood.
The Bush forces tank fired at Giuliana Sgrena's car as it was moving
away (toward the airport), and without warning. Interview with
Naomi Klein,
who spoke with Giuliana in her hospital room.
Israel is creating a new crime - of talking to
journalists.
The Israeli Border Patrol arrested a 12-year-old Palestinian boy
(illegally), made him terrifying threats, then released him alone
in the middle of Israeli settlers. After he ran away to hide,
it was hard to find
him.
When I was last in Israel, I was told that the people in the Border
Patrol are particularly cruel.
Giuliana Sgrena
gives more information about the Bush forces' attack
that wounded her severely--exposing further lies.
A letter that Blair tried to hush up provides more evidence
thast he pressured the UK Attorney General into changing his conclusion that
invading Iraq was against international law.
Coca Cola Company pays
American Academy of Pediatric Dentists to hush
up talk about how soda damages kids' teeth, and to undermine campaigns
to stop selling soda in schools. It also bullies and silences
dentists who try to talk about the issue.
Many people will agree that what the AAPD has done is corrupt. I will
go further and say that schools that try to make money from sweetened
beverage sales are corrupt too. Each school administrator that does
this is engaging in inexcusable corruption. "We need money" is not an
all-purpose excuse. If schools are underfunded, they should take the
bull by the horns and start a movement to increase funding through
taxes. Collecting the money from sales of Coca Cola costs the
children, and their parents, a lot more.
250 Israeli high school students have vowed to go to prison rather
than be drafted to support the occupation.
The Arctic Is The Chemical
Sink Of The Globe.
Photos show
Israelis building rapidly in settlements in Palestine.
Angkor is being destroyed by robbers that cater
to secret collections.
Studies conclusively show that herbicide-resistant GM crops hurt wildlife.
The problems are not the direct result of the plants' genetic
modifications; they are the result of cultivating the plants with
certain herbicides, a method which the genetic modifications were
designed to make possible. This means that the problems are
independent of the precise way the modification was done. At the same
time, these problems do not apply to other kinds of genetic
modifications that have entirely different purposes.
Robert Kennedy Jr. reports on Bush's systematic campaign to destroy
environmental protection in the US. Every agency is now run by
its worst enemy.
Thanks to Bush, coal-burning electric plants are causing lung damage and
brain damage in American children. They emit mercury, and 1/6 of
American women have so much mercury in their bodies that their
children are likely to be born with brain damage. This is because
Bush allowed those plants to keep polluting.
The essay degenerates at the end into religious blither, but that
doesn't make its information less cogent.
Transparency International's report on
corruption in Bush-ruled Iraq.
The Bush regime doesn't get good marks.
The main Palestinian peace negotiator says continued Isreali expansion
of settlements around Jerusalem will make peace
impossible.
The FBI admitted (secretly) that evidence obtained from Guantanamo
prisoners was "suspect at best" because it was obtained by torture.
New EPA Mercury Rule
Called Illegal.
A court in California ruled that journalists have no right to protect
their sources when it comes to trade secrets. In addition, it approved
getting the information from journalists' ISPs. The EFF will appeal the ruling.
There are many reasons not to trust your email to any ISP in an
environment like the US that doesn't respect civil liberties. A previous note describes the experiences of the person
whose ISP permanently denied him access to his own email at the simple request
of the US government.
Bush showed his contempt for the world by proposing
Wolfensohn to head the World Bank.
The World Bank has acted for decades to promote privatization and the
empire of the corporations. Perhaps appointing an unqualified bully as
its head will help the opposition organize.
Zimbabwe, in economic collapse, prepares for a rigged election.
Privatizing the London Underground has been a costly failure.
This is what people get for dogmatic worship of the invisible hand.
The BBC bowed to Israeli censorship by apologizing for
not allowing censors to view its interview with Mordechai Vanunu.
Shame on you, BBC.
Evo Morales and Bolivians demanding a
large increase in taxes on
exports of natural gas called off their street protests, after the
lower house of Congress passed a bill giving more or less what they
asked for.
I've read elsewhere that the 32% tax imposed on gas exports by this
bill, combined with other existing taxes, would amount to more or less
the 50% demanded by the protestors.
The energy minister is mistaken: economic suicide for most of Bolivia
is what would result from continuing down the current path. He, like
President Mesa, has taken the side of the megacorporations who are
Bolivia's principal real enemies.
Uri Avnery: Memory of the Holocaust - from Jewish property into human
possession
The European Commission is concerned about problems from a fall in
Europe's population in coming years. Fortunately it recommends more
immigration as the solution.
The world's population increase threatens living standards, the
environment, causes extinction of species, etc.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
reports that a
Palestinian peace activist has been arrested and is being tortured.
Unemployed workers in Argentina got a loan
to
build a housing project. It seems to be working so far.
A long report by Giuliana Sgrena about her experiences as a hostage
in Iraq.
World Bank employees are saying they object to Wolfowitz.
I expect the Bush regime to steamroll their protests. His standard
practice is to crush any sort of integrity that an agency may have, so
that it becomes totally obedient. I would guess that's what Wolfowitz
is meant to do in the World Bank.
If so, maybe the regime is trying to turn up the pressure for
privatization. This could work, but it could also backfire by
stimulating stronger resistance.
Here's an example of resistance: in Bolivia, the inhabitants
of El Alto (which lies between La Paz and its airport) are once
again taking to the streets, because President Mesa refuses
to cancel the privatization of their water.
It is a mistake to even think of compensating the privateers for their
"investment" in something fundamentally exploitive. Kicking them out
without a cent would teach "investors" a salutary lesson about the
risks of "investing" in charging poor people exorbitantly for water.
Palestinian groups voted to maintain a truce. Will Israel stop its
violence against Palestinians?
The West should demand that the Israeli government do more to rein in
its extremist groups.
As Bush pretends to have succeeded in promoting democracy in the
Middle East, the fact is that his policies are spreading hatred for
the US, as well as religious fanaticism.
However, all the anti-Americans in the Middle East can't
mistreat the US as much as Bush does.
An Israeli calls for popular pressure through divestment in
companies that support the occupation.
He reports on the regular torture of Palestinians that he witnessed as
a soldier, and the steady advance of Israeli settlements even in times
of "peace".
Vietnam's Agent Orange Victims Feel Cheated by U.S. Court
Remember this when people talk about chemical weapons.
Bush's appointment of Wolfowitz: a declaration of contempt, or a
declaration of war?
It would be a mistake to see the World Bank as an political instrument
of the US. Rather, both the World Bank and the US government function
mostly as instruments of the megacorporations.
Thanks to murderous paramilitaries,
75% of the land in Colombia is in
the hands of the rich. The result is urban poverty for many. This is
supported by the US and the UK.
This reminds me of Vietnam, where the US also had a policy of driving
peasants off the land and into "strategic hamlets".
Coca Cola Company is involved in these murders too. That's one of the
reasons for the boycott of Coca Cola Company. See kiillercoke.org.
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu faces new imprisonment for
speaking to journalists, which violates conditions unjustly imposed on
him after the end of his sentence.
Most Palestinians now reject suicide bombings and want to give peace a
chance.
Genetically modified corn in the US, and logging in Mexico,
are
wiping out the Monarch Butterfly.
Bush has pressured Guatemala into adopting a law restricting generic
drugs.
The result will be thousands of deaths.
This is a simple but clear example of what "free trade" treaties mean.
I'm not against international trade, but these treaties must be
abolished.
Greg Palast reports that oil companies have beaten out the neocons,
and convinced Bush to drop the plan to privatize Iraq's oil.
Meanwhile, he presents evidence that Bush began planning the
attack--and the privatization--shortly after taking office. More
proof that 9/11 was just an excuse for what he wanted to do anyway.
Il Ducino says that Italian troops will leave Iraq starting in
September.
Even other fascists find it hard to fully support Bush.
However, this statement falis to say when Italian forces will actually
be out Iraq. So it could be just a way to appease Italians for the
election while really not planning to change much of anything.
Israel's parliament accepted a report detailing how the government had
secretly funded illegal expansion of settlements, and announced a plan
to eliminate a fraction of them.
I'm concerned about the plan to "make illegal construction in the West
Bank a criminal offense." Palestinians essentially cannot get
construction permission from Israel, so all new houses are illegal,
and Israel frequently uses that as an excuse to demolish these houses.
With this law, Iseael could also imprison the Palestinians who build
on their own land.
Hariri Reportedly Assassinated To Make Way For Large US Air Base In Lebanon
I'm not sure how much credibility to give to this theory,
but I wouldn't put assassination beyond the US government,
any more than I would put it beyond the Syrian government.
The Earth's fish stocks are overexploited, and the situation is
rapidly
getting worse. This raises the prospect of wiping out fish stocks,
much as the cod of the Grand Banks were wiped out.
Ken Livingstone shatters the Bush-Blair terror campaign,
saying there is "More danger from bird flu than from terrorists".
Unfortunately, despite all the opposition, Blair has achieved his
ends:
to undermine civil liberties in the UK. A minister can now sign
a "control order" to take away anyone's rights.
The hearings that these suspects can have do not follow the rules of
trials, and do less to protect people from fabrications. (Not that
real trials do enough, since perjury committed by or arranged by
police often suffices to frame people.)
I believe it is just a matter of time before these control orders are
applied to crushing political dissent of all kinds.
Bush and Schwarzenegger have both produced fake news stories.
This article asserts that the US media are independent. The mass
media are hardly independent, they are controlled by the same
corporations that (more or less) control the government. However,
that doesn't diminish the wrongness of corrupting the situation
further.
36 cases of using software patents for aggression,
many against free software.
1/3 of the population of Lebanon protested to tell the Syrian army to
pull out, and the President of Lebanon too.
Ward Churchill is the focal point for a long-planned
Republican attack on academic freedom in the US.
Large anti-Syrian and pro-Syrian rallies are being held in
Lebanon.
Meanwhile, it appears there was a coverup in regard to the
assassination of Hariri. That might be evidence for Syrian
involvement in the killing.
What Syrians can do, Americans can do. The debris of the World Trade
Center was moved and discarded without an investigation, which lends
support to the theory that the Bush regime was involved. I wish the UN
would conduct a serious investigation of who was responsible, but the UN
is unlikely to apply the same standards to a US coverup as to a Syrian
coverup.
Accord With Tomato Pickers
Ends Boycott Of Taco Bell.
The plea of a Palestinian who has been punished for building a house
for his family on his own land in his town.
Global warming is
increasing the amount of forest fires, which make
carbon dioxide from the trees and from the ground below the fire.
This contributes even more to global warming.
Peculiarities of the Kyoto Treaty are encouraging harmful
investments in poor countries. These peculiarities were
imposed
by the US, which due to Bush then turned around and didn't sign.
Pier Scolari, who was with Giuliana Sgrena and Nicola Calipari
when the Bush forces killed the latter and wounded the former,
says that the attack was deliberate and without
warning.
An interview with
Giuliana Sgrena.
A response to Ken Livingstone: if Sharon is a war criminal, then so is
Blair.
This is basically true, but the crime that Blair is guilty of, for
launching a war of aggression, is more accurately described (in
Nuremberg terms) as a crime against the peace.
The Israeli government has collaborated eagerly
in establishment of illegal settlement outposts in Palestinian lands.
Noam Chomsky: US election campaigns work like ad campaigns for toothpase,
based on image and nothing else.
One of the honest bureaucrats in the US Army tried to do her job and
block Halliburton's corruption. The Army tried to label her as
incompetent and force her retire. But she's determined to
fight
corruption, even if that means fighting the White House.
The Bush regime is corrupt from the top on down, and there is no room
in the US government for anyone who is honest and incorruptible.
US infrastructure is crumbling under the weight of Bush regime. This
is consistent with the Bush philosophy of
"grab what you can" and his
lack of concern for the future of the country.
It would be better to spend money on maintaining US infrastructure
than on conquering Iraq. However, there is no point expanding
highways or airports now, since oil prices are likely to shoot up in a
few years, and this will reduce traffic.
Some courts in France are refusing to enforce copyright law against
people who make copies for noncommercil distribution. Hooray.
All across Central America, people are protesting against plansfor a new "free
trade" treaty with the US.
The European Union is
planning to crush human rights in the name of safety."Evidence" obtained
from anonymous "intelligence sources"
would be presented in court, making it easy to fabricate a basis to
imprison anyone. Even to express certain opinions--such as, to say
that an act labeled as "terrorism" was necessary or justified--would
be a crime.
People were shocked when the ACLU defended the rights of Nazis to hold
a public rally in the US--but there is a good reason for this. France
and Germany have long prohibited certain kinds of statements of
support for Nazism. Given that precedent, it is hard to argue against
extending the prohibition. In effect, it is already functioning as
the "edge of the wedge" to attack freedom of speech.
Blair broke the
government's own rules by concealing information from
his ministers, in order to gain their acquiescence for attacking Iraq.
A
boycott-Coke protest at Iowa State University.
Why does Bush want
RFIDs in passports?
How business delayed the recognition that diesel fumes
are dangerous.
One way to reduce these fumes would be to encourage sending freight by
train rather than by rail. (Trains use diesel engines too, but use
much less fuel for the same amount of cargo.) High taxes on diesel
fuel would be one way to do the job.
Opposition to the war is
hampering US military recruitment.
Italian journalist Sgrena accuses the Bush forces of intentionally
shooting at her vehicle, and says that they lied about the circumstances.
(She was injured; the Italian agent who had arranged her release from
Iraqi kidnapers was killed.)
I believe Sgrena, because this
fits a pattern.
Bush has sent over 100 people abroad to be tortured.
Protestors are
blocking a plan to cut down a burned but vital old-growth forest in
Oregon.
Other reports, for which I have no URLs, say that the cops arrested
several protestors and dragged them across a gravel road face down.
They dislocated one protestor's shoulder. Apparently they did not
accuse these people of "assaulting an officer"; there must have been
too many witnesses.
War protestor Chris Gaunt
talks about her experiences in prison for nonviolent protest, including
being falsely accused and convicted of attacking a policeman when she went
limp.
Policemen lie to support each other just like members of a gang. On a
question like this, I will trust the protestor's unsupported word more
than any number of policemen.
Coca Cola Company uses a
series of deceptions and half-truths to evade responsibility for actions
over which it has control. It refuses to cooperate with independent
investigations, but instead funded a phony "independent" investigation.
The telecom companies are funding a large network of organizations
to pretend
to be grass-roots support for their policies.
As a result, the FCC Consumer Advisory Committtee is
packed
with people that indirectly represent the telecom companies.
Greg Palast wishes Dan Rather, and American journalism, "rest in peace".
Bush's "Clear Skies" bill is actually a
rollback
of environmental regulations. Even some Republican senators oppose it,
and it seems unlikely to pass. So he is now trying to attack the organization
of state officials that oppose it.
A Half Million
Lebanese March for Syria.
Now I am starting to worry more than violence will break out
afresh in Lebanon.
I wondered for a while whether this is what Bush intends. However, given
Bush's preference not to hear bad news or projections of problems, to
disregard reality for fantasy, I think he simply isn't paying attention
to the issue.
Public pressure convinced Tiffany's to continue
boycotting Burmese gems, which are mined with slave labor by the
military rulers.
This shows how even when companies act with ethical scruples,
the public needs to keep the pressure on.
Bush policies undermine the global fight against the spread of AIDS,
by opposing needle-exchange and requiring recipients to pledge to
"oppose prostitution". This pledge, aside from being unethical, makes
it hard to help prostitutes stay healthy.
The reason this pledge is unethical is that prostitution isn't wrong.
I can't imagine wanting to pay someone to have sex with me, since I
would not feel loved or wanted in such a situation, but I see no
grounds to condemn prostitutes. Being a prostitute isn't doing wrong
to anyone.
There are moves in the US to
limit protections for journalists to
major (corporate) media only.
This makes sense. The corporate media are controlled enough not to be
very dangerous. The First Amendment is therefore most important, most
dangerous to corrupt officials, when it applies to independent
journalists.
Texas Republicans are moving to
block prosecution for election
law violations, to save Tom DeLay.
These things are possible because the US media are so controlled.
If we had a healthy democracy, they would be afraid of public
opinion.
Bush resumed military aid to Indonesia, based on a dishonest
claim that Indonesia has met the legal requirements for doing so.
Opposition is growing to water privatization in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Muslim women's rights activists say that Bush is
undermining the gains they have made.
Victims of a Stalled Revolution
Bush imposed a deathlike quiet on the city of Mainz, and the
inhabitants (and Germans in general) are getting angry.
If you are living in a place that Bush wants to visit, I suggest you
start a public "Bush is not welcome" movement before he gets there.
Maybe you can cancel the visit that way. If that doesn't work, pay
for a big "Bush go home" sign near the place he wants to go. Bush
does not like to see criticism; perhaps that sign will be enough to
make him stay away.
Since the Israeli settlers have been
threatening violence if they
don't get their way, Gush Shalom suggests, "Take away their guns".
Robert Fisk: Is Lebanon walking into another nightmare?
While Fisk warns that Hezbollah's refusal to disarm opens the threat
of renewed violence, the leader of Hezbollah says he
doesn't want violence in Lebanon. I hope it is true.
Brazil convinced the WTO to rule the US must end its cotton subsidies.
While it is nice to see a poor country benefit from the WTO for a change,
we shouldn't let this blind us to the harm that the WTO does.
Ending the US subsidies could eliminate wasteful use of resources
in the US. But if this is to benefit the poor farmers in poor countries,
it needs to be accompanied by Fair Trade measures. Otherwise, the rich
in those countries will capture most of what US agribusiness loses.
Human Rights Watch says the king of Nepal's army has seized and
murdered hundreds of civilians. His enemy, the Maoist rebels, are
also murdering civilians, but the style differs.
Things seem to have got worse since the king abolished the civilian
government.
The Bush forces marine that was filmed murdering a prisoner in
Fallujah apparently
won't be prosecuted.
I feel sorry for him for being shot in the face, for seeing his
buddies shot, but that is no excuse--neither for killing prisoners,
nor for fighting the war, because he was wrong to be there in the
first place. It is justified for a conquered people to resist the
aggressor with force, and this does not excuse the aggression.
New Zealand developed a weapon to produce tsunamis
during World War II. It appears there has been further
development of the weapon since then.
The guards in a UK prison had a game: putting prisoners together who
would fight each other. One of these prisoners, who was just about to
be released, was beaten to death.
The guard who reported this has
received threats from other guards--including their union leaders.
The Fair Trade movement is growing.
I wish I could participate, but I don't buy much of the goods that
they cover. Most of the food I eat is either in restaurants,
or ready-to-eat in boxes--not raw materials--so it is the restaurant
or the food company that decides where to get the ingredients.
I think Fair Trade should be imposed by law by the rich countries, as
a way to transfer income from business to poor country producers. The
WTO probably prohibits this, because the WTO serves business, not the
poor. This is another reason to abolish the WTO.
A militia leader in Sudan says the government arranged the mass
murder that his group participated in.
Efforts to defend the US against bioterrorists - by throwing money at
research - are backfiring, says a 750-strong group of top scientists.
Bush is using a
claim of "national security" to wipe out
lawsuits from people who he arranged to torture.
Long before Bush, it was well known that most of the information kept
secret by the army was kept secret to protect them from public
criticism, rather than from enemies. The Reynolds case proves, if
proof was needed, that the government cannot be trusted in saying what
needs to be secret. What we see now is the application of this
principle, "national security" as an excuse to cover up vicious
government crimes, at the highest level.
In Ukraine, senior police officers have been arrested for murdering a
journalist.
The UK will stop requiring privatization as a condition for foreign
aid.
Hear, hear!
The US has
used the tsunami as an excuse to push two kinds of
intervention in Sri Lanka--military and economic.
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, dared to criticize Israel's
treatment of the Palestinians, and to call Ariel Sharon a "war
criminal".
I agree wholehearedly with the sentiments in this speech.
I wish it were not so rare that I get a chance to say that
about a political leader.
The global warming denial industry,
funded by oil companies, works to
create just enough skepticism about the danger so that nothing will
get done to prevent it.
The most important part of this article is, "CBI...warned that
companies could decamp to less heavily-regulated jurisdictions."
That's what business-dominated globalization means: any government
that tries to rein in the dangerous or cruel practices of business
receives this threat.
I see only two solutions: either a world-wide democratic government
that the companies can't threaten to escape from, or put an end to
business-dominated globalization. The effective way for governments
to regulate business is to regulate the sale of products: "If you want
to sell it here, you must follow these rules." This is what the WTO
prohibits. The WTO must go!
The fashion show that
was really a protest.
U.S. Must Charge Padilla With Crime or Release Him
Blair's attacks on civil liberties in the UK: a sorry pattern.
When Bush visited Mainz (Germany), the whole city was effectively shut
down to present a pretty and fake backdrop. A visit with citizens was
canceled when the German government refused to select only those who
are friendly to Bush.
European leaders are
politely ignoring what Bush has to say.
Uri Avnery thinks the situation in Lebanon is indeed a new expression
of the old struggles between religious groups.
This disagrees with the report I linked to recently which says that
the opposition is general. I have no way to check either one, but I
have more confidence in Avnery than in an American newspaper.
And it seemed too good to be true.
Liat Weingart, of Jewish Voice for Peace, thanks the Presbyterian
Church for deciding to put pressure on companies that support
the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The US is developing a weapon designed to attack crowds by causing
extreme pain.
Jonathan Schell argues that the apparent power of the US is a mirage,
because the US is unable to use that power to attain its objectives.
I don't entirely agree. Keep in mind that it is not really the US
government that rules this empire; it aids the megacorporations in
maintaining their empire. So the way to measure the effectiveness of
the megacorporations' power is to see how often the megacorporations
get what they want.
Recently in India, person who ought to know told me that the pressure
for India to change its patent laws (well beyond what the WTO
requires--not that WTO requirements are legitimate) comes mainly from
the US government. India is the main supplier of cheap medicine to
keep HIV in check. The drug companies stand to make lots of money
from cutting off the flow, while millions of the
not-quite-poorest-of-the-poor will die as a result.
In Iraq, it looks like Bush may get away with the privatization and
plunder of the country's assets, even though it may cost thousands of
Bush forces casualties and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties per
year.
It seems that Bush often gets the megacorporations what they want,
even though this may not correspond to announced "national interests".
A member of the House of Lords speaks eloquently about
the need to preserve the right to a real trial.
The Turkish prime minister has
sued a cartoonist for a cartoon
that criticized the prime minister. This despite the fact that he was
himself imprisoned for speaking against a previous government.
Blair is making some concessions in his attempt to impose a policy of
punishment without trial on UK citizens. But he is very determined to
get it through, and rejected a proposal to require reconsideration
of the law next November.
The amendments being considered would make the law less bad, but there
is still no justification for it. If they think someone is using
telephones to plot something, they can listen to his phone calls.
Uruguay's new president, a leftist,
forges bonds with various other
leftists--including Castro.
The question is, will they go beyond occasional defiance of
Washington, and confront Washington's masters: the megacorporations,
and their low-wage treaties.
Bush said that the US needs "reliable supplies of affordable,
environmentally responsible energy", but that was just meant to sound
good. Less then 2 months later,
his budget plan cuts funds for
clean energy research.
Invading other countries is expensive, so something or other has to be
cut. But why this? I think Bush has a specific reason for these
cuts: he wants to make the US as dependent as possible on the products
sold by his friends in the oil business.
The pro-Syrian prime minister of Lebanon
resigned after massive protests.
I am heartened to read that the opposition is spread across all the
religious groups in Lebanon. My concern at first was that this was a
manifestation of an underlying power-struggle between the groups. If
opposition to the Syrian troop presence is uniting Lebanon, that is a
good thing for Lebanon. It also suggests that the reason for the
Syrian troops to be there is no longer applicable.
Bhutan has
banned all public smoking, and sale of tobacco. I
support efforts to reduce tobacco addiction, but prohibition
goes too far.
An Iranian journalist has been sentenced to 14 years in prison
in a secret trial where his lawyer was not present.
This journalist was not allowed to meet with his lawyer,
and he wasn't given a real trial. Sounds like the mullahs
are learning from Bush.
Blair wants to imprison people who are mentally ill and
violence-prone.
I sympathize with the motivation, but the danger from such people is
quite small; meanwhile, such imprisonment was abused in the past. So
I think this proposal will cause more danger than it prevents. If
Blair and co. want to protect the public from dangerous psychopaths,
how about starting with the megacorporations?
Bush is negotiating with the Iraqi resistance.
Bush will not agree to a solution that doesn't let his cronies plunder
Iraq. I think Bush is trying to play on divisions within Iraq, and
the result could also be a civil war. It would be awfully sad if the
Iraqis accept this, rather than pushing the Bush forces out.
South Africa is failing to address the AIDS problem, hiding
the extent of it rather than taking effective action.
The total deaths due to President Mbeki's refusal to recognize the
situation will number in the millions.
Israel is trying to blame Syria for a recent suicide bombing.
I think it is partly a matter of "blame the usual suspects", partly a
matter of helping Bush (who wants to cause trouble for Syria), and
perhaps partly a matter of its relations with the Palestinian
Authority.
Israel isn't blaming the Palestinian Authority for the bombing, rather
for not preventing the bombing. Of course, it has no practical
ability to do so. This demand is like the labors of Hercules--it is
unjustified and designed to be impossible, so it realy serves as an
excuse to block peace and put the blame on the Palestinians.
Israeli terrorism is carried out by soldiers and police, and by
settlers. The first two could be stopped by a simple government
decision. The terrorism committed by settlers, like that committed by
underground Palestinian groups, is harder to stop. But if Israel
stops the terrorism that is directly government supported, that might
be enough to change the climate so that the Palestinian underground
groups will have to stop too.
How to save a criminal corporation from prosecution.
A new Republican report claims scientists have overestimated the danger of
mercury poisoning. But since this report was written by politically-appointed
congressional staff, I'd believe the scientists.
Bush's plans for forestry involve eliminating environmental
impact statements--which means that he can give his cronies
whatever they want, without format review.
The new rules also authorize the agency to ignore scientific
evidence. As a recent note pointed out, another Bush agency
frequently pressures scientists to lie. Just ignoring them
must be easier.
I predict that next Bush will fire the scientists in federal agencies.
With the major media ready to support his lies, he has no interest in
facts.
Turkey has become quite hostile to the US, and with good reason.
Without supporting the Turkish position on all the issues, I urge the
Turkish government should stop pretending to be best of friends with
Bush, and start proudly opposing him.
Novartis wants to buy major
makers of generic drugs. I worry about the possibility for corruption that
this would open up.
I suspect that Novartis will try to use its position to prevent
generic drugs from being available, and I think this merger
should be blocked.
The Bush forces took Iraqi civilians prisoner,
and when their
relatives came to ask about them, the soldiers attacked the relatives.
And this was the British Bush forces, the ones that are supposed to
know how to be less cruel.
Novartis wants to buy major makers of generic drugs. I worry
about the possibility for corruption that this would open up.
I suspect that Novartis will try to use its position to prevent
generic drugs from being available, and I think this merger
should be blocked.
How
biased and controlled are mass media in the US? Comparing the
coverage of two scandals, one right-wing and one left-wing, gives a
clear picture.
By the way, I don't see anything the slightest bit wrong in a
reporter's helping a citizen formulate a question to ask an official.
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Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Stallman
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