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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Mobs of Muslims in Nigeria demonstrated how peaceful their religion is by killing Nigerian Christians, venting their anger over the cartoons that suggested their religion was violent. That was in the Muslim-dominated north. Christians in the south retaliated by killing other Muslims, thus demonstrating how their religion teaches them to "love your enemies".
New Pentagon Doctrine: Mini-Nukes are "Safe for the Surrounding Civilian Population".
Reports Find Tenuous Terror Ties at Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
One man was labeled an "enemy combatant" because he admitted he knew Osama bin Laden--from watching TV broadcasts of tapes. Unless they can prove those tapes are really of Osama bin Laden, they ought to release him.
How Bush allowed Al Qa'ida to take root in Pakistan.
I have a few comments to make on this story.
First, there is reason to doubt that Osama bin Laden personally is really in Pakistan, or anywhere at all. The tapes attributed to him seem to be designed to serve Bush, and some independent experts say that the person in the tapes is not really him. He could simply be dead. However, the issue is not really about him or any one person.
These issues have been mentioned in a previous note.
Second, the Taliban are widely reported to have been created by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service. For Pakistan to surreptitiously help them again is no surprise. (Please link to previous note here.)
Third, Pakistan's nuclear weapons probably played a role in convincing Bush to accept Pakistan's half-hearted support and call it complete. It's really interesting to compare how Bush talks about Iran, which might intend to develop nuclear weapons, and how Bush talks about Pakistan, which actually did so--and then offered the plans to Iran and other countries.
However, even despite that, Musharraf might have chosen a different course--if he had seen US efforts focused clearly on Afghanistan for the long term. Thus, Bush's wish to attack Iraq, using 9/11 as an excuse, was directly responsible for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The US still maintains almost 500 nuclear weapons in Europe,
with plans to hand them over to other countries for use,
in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime is systematically shutting off lawsuits against
automobile companies and other manufacturers whose products injure
people.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The president of the Philippines declared an emergency to cancel protests accusing her of stealing the election. These protests include celebrations of the mass rallies which forced the previous dictator Marcos from power.
Amnesty International condemns the UK for systematic attacks on human rights.
The documentary about Guantanamo, whose actors were harrassed by
police, is hard-hitting. Bliar, who tends to label opposition as
terrorism, surely finds a lot of terrorism in the movie.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The mismanagement of Haiti's presidential election is
part of a long
and methodical attempt to deny Haiti's poor their democratic rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
An irate Chinese movie-goer made a parody of a movie that he did not
like.
Now he faces a lawsuit threat from the movie's director, who
can't take a joke. Who does he think he is--Muhammad?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This incident shows the injustice of Chinese copyright law--but injustice is what you must expect when people use the term "intellectual property". That term spreads confusion, and frames whatever issues it is applied to in a way that tends to lead to laws that are too restrictive. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml.)
The Bliar regime is trying to cover up facts about CIA flights through Britain.
As usual, this cover-up works through a campaign of distraction which seeks to confuse the issue just enough to prevent people from pushing home the crucial questions. Bliar asks Britons to treat the Bush regime as above suspicion, to be trusted implicitly and totally.
A politically-motivated reorganization of the State Department drove out the main experts on arms control treaties.
Bush is happy to use arms control treaties as excuses to plan to attack other countries such as Iran, but he does not really like the treaties--they are not unilateral enough for his taste. What he wants to do is terrorize the whole world into submission.
Violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites is rising in Iraq.
The reason I suspect that the Bush forces want the Shi'ites to massacre millions of Sunnis is that they have long been doing many things that tend to provoke civil war (including sending Shi'ite troops to occupy Sunni areas, and setting up Shi'ite death squads that kill Sunnis in large numbers), and that people such as Cheney are not stupid, and could not fail to recognize where these actions are likely to lead.
Hamas leaders met with an Israeli peace activist and explained their position: they will not recognize Israel while Israel continues the occupation of Palestine. They think it is unfair to ask them to make concessions in return for nothing.
Iraq's latent civil war, which the Bush forces have done much to stimulate, has almost burst into open warfare, restrained only by Ayatollah Sistani and Iran.
Perhaps the bombers were Iraqi Sunnis who hate Shi'ites for their religion; it appears such do exist. Or perhaps they were hate Iraqi Shi'ites for not resisting the Bush forces, or on account of the Shi'ite death squads. (Of course, blowing up a shrine is no way to fight the death squads.)
However, since the Bush forces have done so much to set Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites against each other, it would not surprise me if this bombing were carried out by the Bush forces so as to finish the job. I have wondered if their plan were to provoke the Shi'ites into massacre the Sunnis so as to end the resistance.
The Bush regime is rapidly developing the material capability and legal framework to imprison millions of Americans by decree.
I think it is very significant that the Bush regime now has a list of 325,000 "terrorist suspects". Since the number of real terrorists in the US, if we count only those that don't work for Bush, must be a tiny fraction of that, it follows that they are being rather loose with the designation of "terrorist suspect". Perhaps this will be their excuse for imprisoning dissidents that still support the US Constitution.
Various parts of the Bush administration are playing various dirty roles in the sale of 26 US cargo ports to the government of the United Arab Emirates.
It's the typical well-planned Bush regime dirty work, where everyone has an excuse, so no one can be held responsible--if you take a narrow standard of responsibility. However, the president is responsible for all of this, and any president should be impeached for playing such games.
What it means to be a Republican.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
I would criticize a couple of details in this article. It assumes the Bush administration had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks; there is some reason to think it did. It doesn't mention the fact that they paved the way for the flooding of New Orleans by refusing to repair the levees so they could spend the money on a war of aggression.
But more important is a deeper omission--it does not mention why being a Republican works this way. The reasons, I believe, are the corporate media and widespread intimidation. Bush can get away with lie after lie because, when these lies are exposed, most Americans never find out.
Holocaust-denyer David Irving has been
sentenced to years in prison
for stating his views on history. He claims that there was no gas
chambers in some Nazi concentration camps.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This sentence was unjust, and the law under which he was sentenced was unjust as well. Censorship is far more dangerous than the weak and discredited remnants of Nazism as such. The dangerous modern-day fascism comes from mainstream business-friendly political leaders.
Once people can be imprisoned for denying Nazi atrocities, it will be easy to imprison people for denying other things that must never be questioned--such as, that Bush liberated Iraq, that the WTO has ended poverty, and that there is no global warming.
The US mainstream media generally support the Bush regime,
but
Rumsfeld is not satisfied and announced a new campaign to influence
the press.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The public will have to respond by discounting anything the media says that supports the Bush regime, regarding it as probable propaganda, and not to be trusted.
Since the Palestinians of Kaffin are blocked from their lands by the
Annexation Wall, and
cannot replant the olive trees that the Israeli
army uprooted, the Israelis of the neighboring town of Metzer
replanted the trees for them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The UN criticized Israel for withholding the Palestinian Authority's
funds.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The US persistently misrepresents the success of Bush's bizarre prescription drug benefit for old people.
The German government is investigating its own agents' participation in CIA torture kidnapings.
Bush and Blair are intervening in Iraqi "democracy" to demand "non-sectarian" ministers in certain ministries.
There are good reasons to wish for non-sectarian ministers, since the current one operates death squads in police uniforms, but the result is quite ironic--especially since there are specific reasons (see previous notes) to suspect that the Bush regime intentionally trained and assisted those death squads
The root issue is that democracy is not sufficient by itself; respect for human rights is needed too. However, many Iraqis do not value human rights, and Bush is not the one to teach them.
Scientists are joining with liberal clergy to oppose the 'intelligent
design' campaign--but in the process, they are pandering to prejudice against Atheists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Some suggest that we stop using the word "theory" to describe established scientific principles such as gravity and evolution. The word is generally associated with the existence of doubt.
The Bush regime made an unusual deal about selling US port operations to Dubai Ports World, avoiding some of the requirements which are standard in such cases.
It is also peculiar that this company is not private. In effect, Bush plans to sell US ports, not merely to a foreign company, but to another country.
The UK delayed for years in putting extremist cleric Abu Hamza on trial, despite having found him with a cache of arms. This and related evidence lends fuel to the suspicion that he was actually a British agent.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
While it is hard to be sure of this, the statements about British government infiltration of violent groups on both sides of the Northern Ireland conflict are well established.
A US congressional candidate is on the "no-fly" list. Of course, the government won't tell him why.
For this reason, as well as others, I sure hope he wins. It will be embarrassing to the US government to have a congressman on the "no-fly" list, and this will help highlight the injustice and dishonesty of a system that denies people their rights without a trial based on secret evidence.
A major Shi'a shrine in Iraq was bombed; many Shi'ites assumed (as
does this article) that it was Sunni "insurgents", but no one really
knows.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
It is not unusual in Iraq for brutal violence to be carried out by people in Iraqi police uniforms. (Often they are real Iraqi police.)
Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan, is facing opposition from Islamic
extremists that want to remove him from power.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Pakistan does not respect freedom of speech on religious matters. Several people have been sentenced to death in Pakistan for "blasphemy" after they criticized Islam; and this, I believe, is the system that islamists want to impose on the world.
A long drought, combined with the human population and its cattle, adds
up to massive wildlife deaths.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Droughts like this happen ccasionally in nature, but global warming could make them more frequent.
Poverty is spreading in the US under Bush. Poor people often have jobs, but the jobs pay so little that they are just working themselves to death.
The Fair Trade movement is growing in Europe as a way to ensure
decent wages for farmers in poor countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
I believe, however, that this should not be left to volunteers' initiatives. Rich countries should make Fair Trade a legal requirement.
Of course, the WTO would say this is prohibited. So the WTO should be prohibited.
While Bush gave a speech about renewable energy, his hatchet-men were firing the people who work on this at the National Renewable Energy Lab, kicking them out as if they were suspected saboteurs.
This embarrassed Bush, so he found money to restore funds for their jobs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
But unless he kicks out the managers who treated them so badly, I doubt he can get the fired scientists to come back.
Actors who played Guantanamo prisoners in a prize-winning movie were arrested by UK police, along with the real ex-prisoners who were traveling with them. This was not a case of mistaken identity; the police knew exactly who they were.
Note how the police try to evade the odium of their actions by playing on the subtle and unimportant distinction between "arrested" and "detained".
Bush won't admit planning a nuclear war against Iran, but
there is a lot
of evidence that he is. (Mordicai Vanunu said so too.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Unlike the article's author, I place no faith in the government of Iran's claims that it does not aim to develop nuclear weapons. However, even supposing that it does so aim, developing them is nowhere near as bad as being the first to using them. The US, not Iran, is the great threat to world peace.
It is another tragedy for America's freedom, attacked by the liars that pretend they are protecting us.
Positive feedback mechanisms are starting to magnify man-made global warming. We don't know when we will cross the point of no return, or whether we have already done so.
With renewable energy handling only 4% of energy supply, it won't do much to slow this threat unless it is greatly expanded, and quickly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
What the UK government ought to do, to protect its citizens' privacy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Former CIA agent Ray McGovern calls on people in the US government to go public with evidence that Bush is lying to excuse an attack against Iran.
60 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the Bush invasion,
many of them by the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The US and Israel are planning to attempt to bully Palestinians into
holding a new election which would give a result that the US and
Israel like better.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
That's what "democracy" means to Bush: you vote for his choice or he makes you regret it.
It is typical that officials formally deny that they are planning this, while leaks show that they are indeed doing so.
Human-caused global warming is 30 times faster than the last major episode of global warming. What nature did in 10,000 years, we can do in 300.
NOAA government scientists say that they were blocked from stating their disagreement with Bush's politically-imposed "scientific"
conclusion that increased hurricane activity is not due to global
warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This is part of Bush's War on the Earth.
Muslim and Christian bigots suppressed a planned Gay Rights march in
Moscow, with Muslim leaders calling for homosexuals to be killed. (If
they want us to believe that Islam is a "peaceful religion", let them
start being peaceful.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: Support the marijuana reform bill.
Berlusconi is trying to completely crush all dissent from his views on
Italian TV: calling a centrist TV program biased, so as to try to
abolish it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
That is what the right-wing in the US did; after spreading an exaggerated picture of what Liberals stand for, they then labeled centrists such as Clinton as "Liberals".
The people and the police in Basra are enraged at the beating of
prisoners by British Bush forces troops. The former prisoners say
they will sue.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Soldiers who feel threatened tend to vent their anger on whoever they think of as "the enemy". And war always kills civilians. If the populace feels that an army has liberated it from foreign conquerors, and feels powerfully grateful, it can accept the occasional civilian deaths. In such a situation, the soldiers will have no trouble distinguishing the civilian population from their enemy. But in Iraq, any civilian can be immediately suspected of being "the enemy" of the Bush forces. And the populace, wanting an end to the occupation of their country, has no reserves gratitude on which to forgive anything.
A look at one day's newspapers shows that corporate crime
is going great guns.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
An NSI whistleblower says that the NSA is breaking laws even more than people know, but he's forbidden to tell anyone the details, even Congress.
More photos of torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib have been released (including torture to death).
Congressional Democrats are promoting a plan for public campaign
funding which almost completely shuts out third parties.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Here's an example of what the plan's proponents say about it. It presents valid arguments for public funding of campaigns, but ducks the third party issue.
Bliar has persistently lied to get Parliament to pass the
"anti-terror" laws that he wants for other reasons.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Even the American Bar Association condemns the Bush program
of illegal spying.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
A draft UN report accuses the US of torturing Guantanamo prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi says, more or less, 'Muslims Angry at
War on Terror, Not Cartoons'.
[References updated on 2018-04-21 because the old links were broken.]
I think a more precise statement is that they are venting at the cartoons (and anyone even remotely and unintentionally associated with them) the anger that was aroused by torture, mass murder, and cruel military occupation. It is good to point this out to angry Muslims, because anger at those acts of violence is perfectly justified. The only mistake they are making is in displacing the anger into the wrong target.
It is not always easy to find a way to channel the anger aroused by the Bush regime's violence into effective and appropriate action. Many Muslim countries are ruled by dictators backed by the US; those few which are democracies are mostly hogtied by the US and the WTO, and disregard their own people on most issues. But that difficult task is essential to ending Bush's violence. Picking on a weak cartoonist or his countrymen will not do any good for anyone.
Although these statements by the prime minister are fairly wise, Malaysia needs to improve in regard to religious toleration. Muslims in Malaysia are legally forbidden to stop being Muslims.
Blair won a vote on ID cards, but had to make some concessions, as a
result of which the battle is not over yet.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Dalits in an Indian town are standing up to intimidation and attacks
that extended as far as burning their houses.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Tibetans protested Google's decision to bow to Chinese censorship requirements.
The Bush forces new embassy in Iraq, more like a castle to dominate the country, is being built by migrant laborers who work 12 hours a day for a pittance.
Reporters Without Borders accepts funds from the Bush regime. Perhaps
not uncoincidentally, it goes fairly easy on the US (which has killed
many journalists in Iraq), while focusing its ire on Cuba and
Venezuela.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Reporters Without Borders mentions the case of Sami al-Haj, the journalist imprisoned in Guantanamo, but avoids talking about how he has been treated there.
The Castro regime does deserve criticism for imprisoning journalists, but it's not the only regime which holds journalists prisoner in Cuba, and Reporters Without Borders seems to follow a pro-US bias in its treatment of them.
President Morales of Bolivia appears to be adopting right-wing
policies on many issues, contrary to what he promised the people
who elected him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
A study estimates that the US Clean Air Act
produces economic savings
6 times what it cost to implement.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA advocates supporting sustainable development so as to
avoid dangerous social instability.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
If arguments like these help win the support of conscienceless rich people, who don't care if others get sick or suffer, why not use them?
Canada adopted a plan to protect 5 million acres of the Great Bear
forest. Even better, they will control logging in the rest of the
forest, so as to protect the wildlife that lives there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The US has been pretty much caught tapping the phones of the leaders
of Greece. Since they are conservatives, and inclined to be
submissive towards the US, they want to take this lying down.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The implications of Hamas' victory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israel announced a unilateral plan to annex substantial parts of
Palestine--daring to openly admit the theft that we always knew the
settlements were designed to accomplish. Meanwhile, it has resumed
killing Palestinians with rockets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
A French court has ruled that noncommercial peer-to-peer file sharing
is lawful. The media companies will fight to change this, of course,
but it is a signal victory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Blair plans to cancel local elections in the UK because his party might do badly. This is not a joke!
A meeting of leaders of Muslim countries planned and organized the protests against the anti-Islamic cartoons.
There is nothing wrong with defaming a religion--it is just a belief that some people believe. No belief is beyond possible criticism or attack.
An "editorially independent"
student newspaper in the UK turns out not
to be so independent after all. Its editor and other staff were
"suspended from the paper" after they included one of the notorious
cartoons criticizing Islam in an article discussing the resulting
controversy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Journalists are on trial in Turkey for criticizing the government for trying to shut down a conference to discuss the genocide of the Armenians. They are accused of "insulting the government".
I'm sure many Turks really feel offended--but that is no excuse for censorship.
The diamond industry agreement to reject "conflict diamonds" that
support wars looks good, but businesses mostly ignore it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
That often happens with "industry self-regulation" schemes; only the threat of prosecution and fines makes businesses really take care.
Haiti's next president faces the contradictory demands of doing
something for the people, while cooperating with the IMF,
whose aim is
to keep the people in poverty.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Only by defying the IMF is it possible to make life in Haiti better.
Bush's media campaign
has convinced most Americans to fear an
attack by Iran, and nearly half already favor attacking Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Even if Iran had nuclear weapons, I'd be more scared that the US would start a nuclear war, than that Iran would do so. The US is already talking about doing just that.
An Iraqi government (i.e. Bush regime) official accuses occupation troops of participating in smuggling out looted antiquities.
A family reports on a raid on their street in Iraq. All the men younger than fifty have been taken away--to be imprisoned, or perhaps just shot.
An Iraqi journalist who participated in the World Tribunal on Iraq is now a prisoner of the Bush forces, held in Abu Ghraib prison.
Bush claims that broad illegal spying prevented an attack against a building in L.A. Experts have denounced this as confabulation.
More has been learned on how Libby was involved in Plamegate.
Journalists could not get into the
walled-off Iraqi town of Siniyah,
but its inhabitants, when they could get out through the checkpoint,
say their town is now effectively a prison. They hate the occupiers,
and they support attacks on oil refineries and pipelines so as to
stop Bush from stealing Iraq's oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Paul Pillar, who resigned from the CIA, has
publicly affirmed what the
Downing Street memo told us: that Bush manipulated intelligence to
fabricate excuses for the war he already had decided on. He was not
interested in advice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, any talk about "intelligence failures" is an attempt to get high officials off the hook by scapegoating the CIA.
Polar bears are being considered for the endangered species list (in response to a lawsuit) because their habitat, arctic sea ice, is melting away.
The only way to preserve their habitat is to stop it from melting away, and that means reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
How did incompetent Michael Brown get to be in charge of FEMA? It's a
long story of corruption that typivies the Bush administration.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's PR man at NASA tried to censor NASA scientists
for the sake of
administration political goals (denial of the big bang and global
warming).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
A nurse in New Mexico wants an apology after she was
investigated for "sedition", having published a letter
that condemned Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
When Google Desktop Search indexes your files, it sends them to Google servers, where they will remain for 30 days--conveniently accessible to a government that uses the Constitution for toilet paper.
Google excuses this by arguing that the public will trade its privacy for more convenience. That is the standard excuse made by those offering the public an opportunity to do so. I would turn it around: because the public lacks the courage to stand up for its rights one by one, we need to defend their rights at the level of government regulation.
Despite the beginnings of civil war in Iraq, the Iraqi resistance's attacks continue to be aimed primarily at the foreign occupying forces. (I'd guess that most of the rest are aimed at collaborators.)
Cindy Sheehan decided not to run against Dianne Feinstein.
I am disappointed by her decision, and also disappointed that she did not clearly state the reason.
In order to support anti-war candidates, we need well-known anti-war candidates to support. What anti-war candidate could there be to oppose Feinstein who is as prominent as Cindy Sheehan?
Paul Roberts, who used to be an editor of the Wall Street Journal, says it has moved from principled Conservatism to a mindless loyalty to the Bush cause.
I disagree with Conservatives on many issues, about the rights of businesses versus individuals, but at least they opposed an imperial presidency and respected some individual rights. The Bush regime and its supportes are not Conservatives.
Scientists report that New Orleans may have to be abandoned entirely
in a few decades,
due to the effects of global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
It remains possible, however, to raise the level of the city well above sea level, as Galveston was raised a century ago. If the seas rise only a meter, well, one additional meter of elevation would not make it much harder.
WTO Biotech Ruling Reveals Special Interests, Say Critics.
The WTO should be abolished, and as a first step, citizens should demand their governments defy this order as illegitimate.
Bush has resurrected Total Information Awareness under another name.
Legal scholars denounce Bush's arguments for illegal spying.
The main reason why these attempts to "prevent terrorism" won't work is that they are focused only on secondary threats. They won't help against the big dangers that our country faces, such as rigged elections and mass murder by corrupt presidents that appoint corrupt officials and fire those of integrity. Meanwhile, they would be easy for a corrupt president to turn towards prevention of dissent.
Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strike are practically being tortured to feed them.
Deb Mayer, a teacher in Indiana, was fired after a harassment campaign by parents who were angry that she had spoken about "peace" in class. Not satisfied that her principal made a rule against using that word in class, they made false accusations to get her fired.
A former minister of El Salvador was
convicted in the US of torture
that was committed under his direction in El Salvador.
Maybe this will pave the way to try Bush and his henchmen.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The ICC is expected to issue arrest warrants for those who ordered the killing of thousands of people in the Congo. When will it go after the biggest killers, such as Bush?
Iraqis are worse off than before the was in nearly every economic measure. And this doesn't count the killing, torture, and DU. Attacks by the resistance have been increasing and continue increasing.
Scott Ritter says Bush is planning to attack Iran regardless of what the UN does. And that he also plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
The same Danish newspaper that published cartoons about Muhammad rejected cartoons about Jesus.
It could be true that the paper has double standards for Islam and Christianity. If so, that is to their discredit. However, newspapers should be free to publish both kinds of cartoons.
Perhaps some newspaper in Iran would like to publish the previously rejected cartoons about Jesus. If any Christians are offended, it would teach the world a good lesson that freedom of speech cuts all ways.
Bush forces death squads have been operating in Iraq since shortly after the conquest, a former general confirms.
22 congressmen have signed the call to for an impeachment probe.
The Bush forces are making soldiers pay for equipment destroyed in combat, if they can't provide proof. Well, how else can they getthe money to pay Halliburton?
Veterans protested on behalf of Bush forces soldiers poisoned by Dirty Uranium bombs.
Republicans' changes in US law have allowed courts to consider evidence obtained by torture.
The US is step by step becoming a demonic parody of the values it professes.
More than half of the prisoners in Guantanamo are not accused of actually doing anything.
When Gonzales and Alito say that the president can do whatever he wants, they are following precedent--in Germany.
Crazed Islamist protestors took over parts of Beirut.
They seem to believe that it is legitimate to punish
not only whoever would mock their religion, but any handy
substitute.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
It is ironic to see Muslims rioting and killing people because someone had the impudence to accuse Islam of being a violent religion. Of course, not all Muslims are doing this; Islam does not automatically make all its believers violent. But it can't be denied that an attitude that encourages violence is one aspect of Islam. This attitude can manifest itself in situations where it is justified, as in the Iraqi resistance, and in situations where it is unjustified, as in the attacks on Danes and French.
Some suggest that newspaper editors should "learn how to live in a multicultural world" by not publishing anything that might offend some group of touchy people that might fly off the handle. I respond that it is Muslims that need to learn how to live in a multicultural world, by learning to respond to words with words, not with fists or guns. Some wiser Muslims understand that violence in response to words does "more damage to the name of the Prophet...than the cartoons." The rest must listen to them.
During my career of fighting for free software, my work has been called "Communist" and a "cancer"; once I was called a "mad imam". Despite all these insults, I never once threatened to kill or injure the people who insulted me--nor even to sue them. People have a right to insult me and my views--or you, or your views--or Muhammad and his views--or anyone and any views.
An Iranian newspaper has started a Holocaust cartoon contest as a response to the cartoons about Islam.
There is something not quite appropriate about this response; in effect they are saying, "Since you said something nasty about us, we will say something nasty about someone else." It would be more appropriate as a response to run a contest for cartoons to insult a certain newspaper editor.
It is also redundant: antisemitic books are already prominently displayed in the bookstores of some Muslim countries, and I'd guess that includes Iran.
However, this is a big step up from violence. At least this newspaper has recognize that the proper response to insulting words is verbal.
In a program to save women's lives, the UK will replace the cut-off US aid funds for organizations that do abortions.
Corporations could be charged with homicide when their negligeance
kills people, just as people are. And in the past, they sometimes
were.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Turnabout: Iran and Venezuela Plan War on Israel
The Bush war crimes commission's report details the case against Bush for various kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Iraqi religious leaders, Muslim and Christian, call for the release of prisoners held without charges by various armed groups. (One of those groups is the Bush forces.)
Unsealed court records show that Libby will be accused of a broad pattern of lies.
Blair is planning to participate in the permanent military occupation of Iraq.
Note the pro-Bush bias of the article, which pretends that the Bush occupation is necessary because the "insurgency disrupts everyday life" in Iraq. Any disruption they cause is nothing compared to what the occupying forces do. Here's a small example.
Sao Paulo, Brazil, is about to
make solar water heating mandatory
on all new and rebuilt buildings.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Police tried lying to justify arresting Cindy Sheehan; when that would not stick, they tried a half-hearted apology that is a vehicle for more lies. She's not having any of it.
Some in Congress are talking about passing laws prohibiting US
companies from cooperating with Chinese internet censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran, a neocon group posing as a freedom movement, is feeding "news reports from Iran" to the media to provide an excuse for war.
The various leaked British memos have proved conclusively that Bush lied when he said he had not yet decided to attack Iraq. The US mass media have not informed the public of this.
Iraq under Bush rule is worse off in every way than under Saddam Hussein's rule. Even malnutricion is up, and that's by comparison with the years of sanctions.
Isreali public opinion favors negotiating with HAMAS.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
When an opinion poll reports 48% in favor and 43% opposed (with therefore 9% undecided), the right way to interpret that is 48-to-43. It's not very likely that all the undecided people will come down on one side once they make up their minds.
HAMAS won the election largely because Israel refused to make any concessions to the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority.
It is hard for Western governments to criticize HAMAS
after what they themselves have done.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Not having done those things, or supported them, I am morally in a position to criticize HAMAS. I oppose of its stated goal of eliminating Israel, and I will utterly oppose any harm that it does to womens' rights.
But HAMAS' policies should not stop Israel from negotiating with a HAMAS-led Palestinian government. In practical terms, Israel's violence against Palestinians dwarfs Palestinians' violence against Israel. Israeli settlers are stealing Palestinian land and water as you read this. If HAMAS is willing to overlook all this and negotiate with Israel, Israel can overlook the lesser HAMAS violence and negotiate with HAMAS.
The IWW organized a Starbucks in New York City, and fought off management's attacks on their members.
Daniel Ellsberg says that protestors in the streets made him realize his patriotic duty to publish the Pentagon Papers. Now it's up to Americans to protest so that today's officials will recognize where their duty lies.
The Pentagon has created a complete data base of students in the US, and is ready to share it with the police at any time.
The UK police who shot Menezies, the Brazilian who they assumed was a
suicide bomber, then altered their log to cover up what they had
done.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Lying is standard practice for cops. They lie to cover up, they lie to make their crimes look justified, and they lie to put people in prison.
You probably know by now that HAMAS won the Palestinian elections. I've been unable to find a good story about this and its implications in a place I could link to.
When Israel and others refer to HAMAS as enemies with which they cannot possibly talk, it's useful to recall that Israel built up HAMAS as a way of weakening support for the Fatah.
Hamas does not plan to impose Islamic law, but its victory
may unleash
extremist pressure against women's rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi resistance is having increased success in stopping Bush from using Iraq's oil to pay for the occupation of Iraq.
Google is cooperating with Chinese censorship.
Google is using the collaborator's standard excuse--that collaboration with injustice somehow makes it less. Once in a while, this is true. Usually it is false, but it is not easy to prove that it's false, and that is why it is such a handy excuse.
On rare occasions, it is possible to mitigate an evil system by working with it and trying to be sensitive. However, this cooperation also tends to prop up the system. It is easy for the collaborator to count the few occasions on which it has mitigated the evil; it is not so easy to measure how much the collaborator has contributed to the perpetuation of the evil by not opposing it. Thus, it is natural for the collaborator can cite the former while ignoring the latter. It ends up as a systematic excuse for collaboration, and therefore must always be distrusted.
Even Fox News is worried about a new prohibition in the proposed USA PAT RIOT act.
Maine is the first US state to require TV manufacturers to pay for disposal
of the toxic materials in TVs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
17 representatives now call for Bush to step down or to be impeached.
Former British intelligence agent David Shayler was reviled when he claimed that in 1996 MI-6 plotted with Al Qa'ida to assassinate Qaddafi. Later a leaked document proved he was right. (Look for "London and Manchester".)
Shayler believes 9/11 was an inside job, but has no specific evidence to add to this.
A Bush forces official will go to prison for stealing millions from the military occupation of Iraq.
Bush's subsequent governors of Iraq have followed the same pattern of corruption.
Bush wanted to disguise a spy plane as a UN plane so as to dishonestly claim Saddam Hussein had attacked the UN.
This would not have been the first time that the US treated the UN treacherously in Iraq. The original UN weapons inspection team was forced to leave because some of its members were spying for the US.
Double standards in the Capitol, and in Israel.
Israeli treatment of Palestinians
reminded Desmond Tutu (and many
others) of Apartheid. There is now a Palestinian campaign to boycott
Israel and its organizations, following the example of the boycott
campaign that forced South Africa to end Apartheid.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Republicans passed a law to make poor mothers work longer hours
(what are they supposed to do with their children in that time?)
so they can give the rich another tax cut.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
After a Danish newspaper printed a cartoons making fun of Islam and
Mohammed, Muslims around the world began making threats, demanding the
power to censor criticism of their religion world-wide. They also
began boycotting Danish companies, and the newspaper shamefully
apologized. But other papers around the world have reprinted the
cartoons in
defense of freedom of the press.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
I have not seen the cartoons; I don't know what I would think of them as statements, but I doubt they are much harsher than my cartoons about Bush. In any case, whether I agree with these cartoons is a side issue. Muslims persistently demand to bully into silence anyone who would criticize them. (Remember the assassination orders against Salman Rushdie?) The rest of the world should resolutely show that they have no such power.
I am an ACLU member, and I defend the right of even Nazis and neo-cons to express their pernicious views. Believers in Islam, and critics of Islam, also have right to express their views. Nobody, not Mohammed, not even Bush, has the right not to be mocked.
Cleveland police attacked a woman putting up posters for a protest, then accused her of "assaulting an officer".
I guess she hit their knees with her back. That's what protestors with police sitting on them always do.
Cindy Sheehan reports on her arrest in the Capitol Building.
Afghanistan, 5 years after the war, is slowly falling apart. Bush made grandiose promises to rebuild the country, but they were just noise. Now the country depends on growing opium, while the Taliban are slowly coming back.
I supported the war in Afghanistan--not because of 9/11, but because the Taliban were horrible. I did not realize that Bush would let the country dangle while he moved on to his real target, Iraq. Now I wonder whether it is too late to prevent another round of long drawn-out violence in Afghanistan.
Jimmy Carter says that some Bush regime officials want to keep troops in Iraq for 50 years.
Rumsfeld wants Americans to become accustomed to a permanent state of war.
Someone who tried to watch Bush's State of the Union address reports that Bush surpassed himself in hypocrisy.
Mali's farmers
reject genetically modified cotton because it
would subject them to the permanent control of seed companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Are large corporations now "too big", or "too important", to prosecute
for crimes?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
A Kurdish democracy activist has been sentenced to 30 years prison in semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan for "insulting" its government.
That government operates under the umbrella of Bush protection, and Bush could surely make it stop these outrages if he wanted to. However, for Bush this represents only his dream of how to run a country.
Iraq is not Vietnam...but here's a list of parallels.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued AT&T for engaging in illegal surveillance of its customers (in cooperation with the Bush regime).
Veterans for Peace are creating relationships with reservists, who might be sent to Iraq to fight in the Bush forces. This can help build resistance to the war among the soldiers, where it is urgently needed.
Senator Feingold pointed out that Torture Gonzalez lied in his confirmation hearing when he was asked about illegal spying as a hypothetical possibility.
Lying to Congress is a crime; shouldn't Gonzalez be prosecuted?
Almost half of Iraqis support attacking the Bush forces. That figure includes the Shi'ites and Kurds.
I understand Iraqi's concern that the Iraqi police and army are not capable of policing the country. The troops tend to desert when there is a battle, or even before.
However, "building up" the Iraqi "security forces" is not a matter of mere training and supplies. As long as the occupation continues, these forces are collaborators; the resistance attacks them, and they can't help knowing that what they are fighting on the wrong side. Meanwhile, some of the police are death squads, probably trained by the Bush forces.
I think that building of Iraqi security forces composed of patriotic Iraqis can only begin once the Bush forces are gone. Only then will patriotic Iraqis be able to participate.
Cindy Sheehan joined others including Kevin Zeese (senate candidate) and Ann Wright (a diplomat who resigned from disgust for Bush) at a rally for impeachment in DC.
She was also arrested while listening to the State of the Union address--for wearing a shirt that criticizes Bush. Nothing more than wearing a shirt.
Does anyone know whether Senator Feinstein changed her mind and supported the filibuster against Alito? If not, I look forward to supporting Sheehan's senatorial campaign.
A Swiss lab says voice-print analysis shows the latest Osama bin Laden tape is not Osama bin Laden.
Walter Cronkite had suspicions about a previous tape, too.
Washington is threatening to cut aid to Bolivia unless Morales kowtows.
When this article speaks of "reforms", that probably means the same thing it means when the IMF says it: measures to screw the poor. Perhaps Morales should simply withdraw Bolivia's request for this aid, so that it will cease to be a lever in Washington's hands.
Gunfire failed to stop the massive protests in Nepal against the
king's autocracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Women soldiers in the Bush forces died of dehydration, because they refused to drink water after 4pm. Their reason: they were afraid that if they went to the latrine at night, they might get raped. General Sanchez took steps to cover up the problems.
An interview with Harry Belafonte about Bush and the constitution.
I think Belafonte makes a mistake in saying that "poverty is terror". Poverty is suffering, but identifying all kinds of suffering with "terror" is destroying an important distinction.
The US took hostages in Vietnam, too.
Bolivia and Venezuela have signed a trade accord, exchanging diesel fuel for agricultural products. This seems like a further step in Bolivia's rejection of the empire.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.
The leader among Sunnis disposed to cooperate with Bush says that the Shi'ites are pursuing a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Baghdad.
Theocracy based on lynch-mob violence is the rule in Iraq today.
A tower of evidence supports the claim that the World Trade Center was destroyed by explosives, not airplanes.
And some of the details connect it directly with the Bush family.
The Geneva Conventions clearly prohibit taking hostages, and US law makes it a crime for soldiers to do so. But it has become a common practice in the Bush forces, and no one has been prosecuted.
I forecast that the Bush regime will eventually be found to have committed nearly all the forms of evil that have ever been known or envisioned. It has rejected any and all limits on its actions, so its demand for power is now unchecked, and will spread like poison gas into every corner of the space of cruelty.
Palestinians unite again to call for the release of the Christian Peacemaker Teams.
Inside the Justice Department,
even some Conservative lawyers tried
to resist Bush's drive for absolute power. But they were forced out.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Bush has no room for old-fashioned Conservatives, since their views include principled opposition to an all-powerful executive branch and defending constitutional rights. To work for Bush, one must support Bush's power all the way.
When Bant Singh's daughter was raped by higher-caste Indians, and the village council sentenced her to marry one of the rapists, Bant Singh pursued the case and got the rapists imprisoned. Their relatives took mutilated him in return.
He may die as a result of the injuries, which were
untreated
because the doctor demanded a bribe. (Remember the visitor
in Florida whose eye was hit by a bullet?)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This is typical of the way Dalits are treated--like the way Blacks were treated in the US under segregation, but worse.
With the weak congressional opposition to Bush's illegal spying, what if Bush uses the hearings as an opportunity to go further?
Cindy Sheehan says: she will run against Diane Feinstein for the US Senate if Feinstein doesn't join the Alito filibuster.
Feinstein's policy about Alito--to make an ineffective gesture of opposition while rejecting effective opposition--is typical of her general political position: she is a right-wing Democrat, one of those responsible for the degradation of the Democratic Party. However, desirable as it would be for her to be replaced by a real Democrat, I'd much rather see her join the filibuster and defeat Alito.
How the CIA scientifically studied torture to develop traceless techniques for breaking people's spirit--in imitation of the Soviet Union.
50 scholars, and former high government officials, charge Bush with participating in the 9/11 attacks.
More cases where the Bush forces took Iraqi women hostage.
I offer the Iraqi men whose family members were taken hostage by Bush terrorists the same advice that I offered to westerners when Arabs took hostages: don't give the terrorists what they demand!
Captain James Yee, who was the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, reports on mass suicide attempts, and how the Bush authorities won't release prisoners they know to be innocent--and how he himself was arrested and treated like the Guantanamo prisoners, on charges later dropped.
One mainstream commentator, Joel Stein, dared to recognize that it's
wrong to "support" troops engaged in an unjust war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
(I've read that he has since been vilified by Bush's army of character assassination.)
This is exactly the reason why I won't call them "our" troops. Some of them used to be the US Army, but since Bush took them away to use them for a war of aggression, they are not "ours" any more. Calling them the "Bush forces" denies Bush a handle to manipulate Americans through their misapplied patriotism.
Susan van Haitsma says that her brother in law, a reservist on his way to Iraq, asks for Americans for just one kind of support: to oppose the war.
Remember Total Information Awareness?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
When Congress canceled it, people warned that Bush would bring it back under some other name--and he did, in the NSA.
Tackle nuclear waste disposal first,
warn UK advisers, as Blair plans
to build new nuclear plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The ACLU got proof that Iraqi women were taken hostage by the Bush forces, to put pressure on their husbands.
Previous notes refer to earlier accusations of hostage-taking; what's new here is to get proof from Bush forces documents.
The "deceitfulness" of one of the women in the last case probably refers to what you'd expect a wife to do when she knows her husband is in danger.
An FBI agent spying on a peaceful protest arrested Caitlin Childs for refusing to hand over a piece of paper on which she had written his car's license number.
The protesters were vegetarians, criticizing the sale of meat. In the eyes of Bush, that makes them terrorists.
Police have made several clumsy attempts to infiltrate the Broward Antiwar Coalition, including one apparent attempt to provoke a confrontation with police at a rally just as it was scheduled to end.
I sympathize with photographers Hammontree and Lauderdale; people who protest in public should not criticize, let alone attack, journalists for photographing them. But let's not get distracted from the real threat to these journalists, which comes from the police, as this article also shows. No city should allow its police to confiscate cameras. If the police don't want witnesses, what are they trying to hide?
I also suggest that police should be required to make a video recording of all their official dealings with citizens, including all arrests. Police are much more likely than the average citizen to engage in unjustified violence; they need to be strictly supervised.
The president of France threatened to use nuclear weapons against countries that support terrorist use weapons of mass destruction on France. The threat seems to intended to manipulate French public opinion.
This does not go as far as the US has already gone. The US has officially refused to accept any limits on when it might use nuclear weapons.
How the Bush forces, thinking only about "winning the war", drifted into laying the groundwork for an Iraqi civil war.
US "justice": protestors who put their own blood on a military recruitment center were sentenced to prison, while a soldier who tortured an Iraqi prisoner to death was not.
Was that because his method of torture didn't spill blood?
The House of Lords tore up Blair's mandatory ID plan in the name of
freedom, but did not completely reject the first stages of the plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Support for impeachment is growing among Americans, but some Democratic politicians are trying to defend Bush from their constituents.
Why would a Democrat protect Bush when her constituents want to impeach him? I suspect it has to do with campaign finance.
The Bush plan to "rebuild Iraq" was sabotaged by
bad organization and
dishonesty--the pretense that Bush had not already decided to invade
required the administration not to plan what to do afterward.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, the continued resistance has meant that the Bush forces do additional damage faster than they could ever have rebuilt old damage.
An interview with Ali Fadhil, award-winning Iraqi journalist, who was arrested by the Bush forces.
The
World Bank says that western aid to Afghanistan, which bypasses
the Afghan government, weakens it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
That might be true, but I wonder about other good reasons for bypassing the government. Will it use the aid fairly and honestly?
Bush plans a campaign of lies to excuse illegal spying.
Anti-war soldiers in the Bush forces are organizing--cautiously--to bring the war to a halt. (Skip the first story.)
Everyone in the Bush forces deserves a certain amount of compassion, though not as much as the Iraqis that they massacre and torture. But when we speak of "supporting" them, it should mean supporting these organizing efforts.
2005 was the hottest year on record, and did so without help from el niño, which means it clearly indicates the warming trend.
When
Roberts and Alito said they could not discuss cases
they might consider if appointed to the Supreme Court,
they were disregarding a Supreme Court ruling which said
that indeed they could do so.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
An Iraqi-American who raised funds to send food and medicine to Iraq has been convicted of many technical crimes which usually are not prosecuted at all--after being labeled as a "terrorist".
An internal Pentagon report says that the Iraqi resistance has stretched the Bush forces almost to the breaking point. If the resistance holds on, it can win.
Jim Massey, the ex-marine that testifies to the evil he and his unit did in Iraq, is now facing a typical right-wing campaign of character assassination.
A former Abu Ghraib soldier says that various kinds of torture were standard practice there.
As Bush argues for illegal spying on the claim that the whole world is now a battlefield and he can therefore do whatever he wishes anywhere, prominent Democrats in the Senate are accepting the illegal spying.
With this, the US government has declared the abolution of human rights, and war on the whole world (including Americans).
The Arab League's attempt to reunite Iraqis has failed, with Shi'ite organizations now preaching hatred for Sunnis.
This could be failure for Bush's aims of controlling Iraq, but it gives little hope for freedom and democracy in Iraq.
There are reports that a Bush forces officer, Colonel Westhusing, was
murdered by the company he was investigating--a privatized government
agency that is now part of the Carlyle group.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
I don't know if this is true, but we can't deny it is plausible. And that illustrates something broader which we do know is true: the Bush regime's degraded standards of honesty and justice make it easy, in general, for the powerful to get away with murder.
6 former heads of the EPA got together to condemn Bush's policy of
disregarding environmental threats.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Iceland is beginning to convert from gasoline to hydrogen to run vehicles.
I see two shortcomings: (1) we can't wait till the middle of the century to stop global warming, and (2) most of the world doesn't have Iceland's geothermal energy source, so we still need other ways to generate the electricity to make the hydrogen.
The bill Congress is considering to
restrict analog video recorders
includes a secret requirement. It would be, in effect, a secret law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Zanon Ceramics in Argentina was seized by its workers in 2002.
Now it is more efficient, safer, better to work at, and has made
friends with its community.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The state of Alaska refused to provide its voter data base
to be
checked for fraud, saying it has a contract with Diebold
not to do so.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This contract should be treated as invalid, because the public's right to an honest election is more important than whatever happens to any company.
The issue also illustrates why governments have a duty to use free software. They have no right to give control over their data processing into private hands.
Blair is trying to suffocate the investigation of
possible UK
cooperation in CIA torture flights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Protestors who spray painted "troops out now" in Ohio face felony charges.
Meanwhile, Bush faces no punishment for breaking a large string of laws.
A Bush forces soldier who tortured an Iraqi to death was convicted of "negligent homicide".
An army that treats the "need to make someone talk" as a mitigating factor for torture will never end torture in its ranks.
More evidence is appearing that shows the danger of Depleted Uranium dirty bombs--and that it can contaminate people who visit battle areas months after the battle.
Bechtel vs. Bolivia: The People Win!
However, full victory means the abolition of these secret courts that are not responsible to the people of any country.
Further tests confirm security flaws in Diebold electronic voting machines.
However, grave as these flaws are, I'm not sure these tests get at the heart of the matter. The crucial question is not whether an outsider could break the security of the machines, but rather whether corrupt election officials could do so, or make it easy for Diebold to do so.
The Taliban have brought suicide bombings to Afghanistan, which seems to be slowly heading towards a quagmire like that of Iraq.
Sudan arrested the attendees (local and foreign) of a human rights meeting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The opponents of Blair's national ID card believe they can defeat it.
Israel:
A state held hostage by organized crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The EU is overlooking human rights abuses in other countries in favor
of lucrative contracts.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The latest Palestinian suicide bombing was not responding to an
Israeli attack--rather, it seems to have been intended to
cause
trouble for Palestinian elections and prevent both Israelis and
Palestinians from moving towards peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Testimony in the Bush war crimes commission lays out how Bush faked reasons to justify a war of aggression.
The levees of New Orleans were
built in a shoddy fashion that could
indicate fundamental flaws in how the Army Corps of Engineers does its
work.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Why is no one talking about raising the level of the land in the areas that need to be rebuilt? If we had the sense to do this in Galveston a century ago, why not today? With sea levels rising, and hurricane numbers and strength increasing, any levees that we might build now will surely be inadequate in two decades.
The head of the Veterans Administration did not say why he resigned, but some say it's because he sees no way to deal with the disaster of poisoning by DU ("Depleted" Uranium dirty bombs).
Torture flights: what No 10 knew and tried to cover up.
To rely on the word of a known liar to guarantee the honesty of one's conduct is in itself dishonesty.
Hamas support grows
after Israelis shoot militant leader.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The proposed renewal of the PAT RIOT Act has a new provision that would
make it a crime to "disrupt" a political convention or other "major events".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
If interpreted narrowly, that might be legitimate, but handing such power to a regime with a persistent habit of stretching laws is dangerous.
(The part about entering a place where the president will be does not seem like a big deal to me.)
One by one, Iraqi cities and towns are being turned into prisons, in which the Bush forces prevent people from living normal lives. In effect, Palestine all over again.
Iran is setting up an oil market that will operate on euros instead of dollars. This directly attacks the worldwide use of dollars which gives the US its economic power.
I don't have faith in all the conclusions drawn in the article--predicting human actions several steps ahead is never reliable, since there are always other possibilities. (Life is not a game of chess.) But this does seem likely to weaken the US' ability to bully the world, and that would be a good thing.
One anomaly bothers me: why is Iran pushing the nuclear issue now, when that helps the US win support for war against Iran? It's clear that the best strategy for Iran would be to avoid offering a casus belli. It might be that the president of Iran is a fanatic, overcome by his emotions--but I'd need more evidence before I'd take that as the explanation.
Florida wants to reconstitute the privacy-invading Matrix program.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
More suspicious points in the latest "Osama bin Laden tape".
Osama bin Laden tapes have a history of appearing just when Bush needs them.
It would not be necessary for bin Laden to be dead, or collaborating with Bush, in order for the CIA to fake a tape. But neither of those is the case, one might expect him to speak up to denounce the fakes. Many have argued that he is dead, and that seems plausible to me.
An interview with three Bush forces veterans about how they joined what was then the US Army, what they saw in Iraq, and why they now oppose the war.
There are plans to track all car travel by putting RFIDs in license plates.
The Canadian lawyers that seek to prosecute Bush for war crimes have appealed the dismissal of their case.
Several chains of evidence connect the death squads of the Iraqi government with the death squads of Central America in the 80s.
The US accuses Venezuela of "overspending" on a "military buildup".
It's like the pot calling the Sun black.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Once again the US Senate considers a bill to require Digital
Restrictions Management in all computers-- disguised as a footnote in
a bill to impose the "broadcast flag" on digital TV broadcasts.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government, like the Bush regime, is trying to keep the public
in the dark about wounded soldiers. It has
refused to release
statistics about the severity of the wounds.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans expect to win the 2006 election the same way they
won the 2004 election--by cheating.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli police won't let a Palestinian return to an Israeli hospital for treatment. He got AIDS from a blood transfusion and can't be treated in Gaza. The police say he is a "security threat", but he could hardly do any harm on this visit if he is watched.
The latest "bin Laden tape" urges everyone to read the book Rogue State, by Bill Blum. The same Blum wrote another book condemning the (US-supported) Afghan resistance in which bin Laden got his start.
Did the real bin Laden decide to overlook Blum's opposition to his first battle? Or is this tape CIA disinformation, meant to smear people like Blum that criticize US attacks around the world?
For the record, I supported the US campaigns to arm the Afghan resistance, and I still think that it was right to help the people of Afghanistan to kick out the occupying foreign army that they hated.
The German government is trying to prevent a public inquiry
into whether its spies helped the Bush forces attack Iraq.
They say this would spread "anti-Americanism".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
However, the attitude that this would spread would not be hostile to Americans--only to the unjust and undemocratic government that has taken hold in the US.
The
greatest heroism possible for a soldier is to stand up to one's
own commanders. Here are some US military heroes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Michel Chossudovsky says that the US is planning a nuclear attack on Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
A practical RFID-zapper that is trivial for any electronics hobbyist.
The EU proposes taxing air travel and short-term financial
transactions. It seems like a good idea, since it will discourage
those things as well as raise money.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Jack Abramoff worked in the 80s for South Africa's intelligence.
In 2000,
the CIA gave Iran nuclear bomb plans.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Epidemiological methods estimate that between 200,000 and 700,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by the war.
Iraqis and other Arabs are aghast over the kidnaping of Jill Carroll, and calling on the kidnapers to free her.
Previous kidnapings attributed to Iraqi "terrorists" have also given grounds to wonder which side the perpetrators were really on.
Death Sentence for Friends and Families of Alleged Terrorists
US military recruiters are failing to make their quotas--so they accuse Americans of cowardice.
This is part of a larger pattern, in which the pressure for officers and enlisted men to support a war that they know is wrong corrupts their spirit and that of their institution.
James Lovelock says global warming has gone beyond the point of no
return. It could be true, but there is no way to be certain, so it
would be foolish to give up.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
However, if the US continues blocking any real efforts to slow global warming, we're all down the tubes.
The Bush forces sealed off an Iraqi town and arrested 100 local men of all ages, after an attack by the resistance.
A veteran of the Bush forces calls for impeachment of Bush.
A Bush forces soldier is on trial for killing an Iraqi prisoner.
Once the Bush-approved torture methods are seen as normal, it is not a big step to killing prisoner. It is predictable that people will take that step from time to time.
Kevin Benderman, imprisoned illegally for petitioning conscientious objector status, continues campaigning for all Americans, even from prison.
Sgt Benderman's principled stand.
A US attack in Pakistan, which came as a surprise to the
government of Pakistan, is strengthening Islamist opposition
to the government there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
To attack civilians in an "allied" country is rather arrogant, but I think that shows the attitude of the Bush regime. To be its "ally" only means that you don't get attacked when you're obeying.
The US Supreme Court upheld Oregon's assisted-suicide law. The only opposition came from "conservatives" that normally claim to support "states' rights".
Google is resisting Bush's
attempt to collect information about
searches that the public has done.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The government has no business violating people's privacy merely to study how to implement a law.
The Iraq war will cause a trillion dollars of damage to the US economy--or more, if the Bush forces continue it.
Al Jazeera's lawyers have petitioned to see the transcript of Blair and Bush's discussion about bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters.
Correcting US misinformation about Al Jazeera.
More information on how the forged Niger uranium documents reached US intelligence.
People in the State Department recognized them as suspect before Bush referred to them as valid. That's more evidence that Bush was not misled by mistakes, but rather that he demanded a certain conclusion and people gave it to him.
The Iraqi Constitution was surreptitiously changed between its approval and its publication. The changes are interesting.
Republicans want to "reduce the red tape" that protects our environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Here's what happens in other countries which streamline industrial activity. It used to happen in the US, too--and it could happen again in the future.
Israeli police have arrested settlers for attacking
Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This is news because settlers usually enjoy impunity for such attacks. It would be very good if this counterexample indicates a lasting change in policy.
The government of France is practicing long-term imprisonment without trial, and seems to have cooperated with the CIA by turning a blind eye (at least) to torture flights.
CNN's new host, Glenn Beck, has a history of right-wing hatred on the
air--even
suggesting the murder of prominent opposition figures.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
It is useful to compare claims of "liberal media bias" against facts like these.
Two more Cuban-Americans have been arrested for informing the Cuban government of the activities of terrorists sheltered by the US.
The US Army covered up the fact that Pat Tillman was
killed by other
US troops. Perhaps this was only because the news would be
embarrassing, and they wanted to use him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
However, Tillman denounced the Iraq war as "illegal" to fellow soldiers, and was opposed to Bush.
I've seen suggestions, without clear proof, that the Bush regime had him killed to prevent him from campaigning against Bush policies. I don't know if that is true.
The European Commission is trying again to impose software patents on Europe.
Although that article puts the words "open source" in Florian Mueller's mouth, his actual posted statement did not use those words. I wonder what is the reason for this.
An Iraqi refugee charges that the Iraqi Minister of the Interior directly authorized random arrests and torture of prisoners.
A report that the Bush forces recently took a 70-year-old grandmother hostage, demanding that her grandson surrender himself to authorities that are likely to torture him.
I don't know enough to judge the accuracy of this report, but the Bush forces have made a practice of taking family members hostage for over two years. John Yoo recently argued in public that Bush has the right to order the torture of a child if he thinks that is the right way to defeat "bad people". Hostage-taking fits that attitude perfectly.
Bush and Yoo decline to recognize that, with that attitude, they too are "bad people". And because they are more powerful than other "bad people" such as Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, they belong earlier in the World's Most Wanted list.
The UN "stabilization force" in Haiti has had to admit it killed innocent people in a raid on "gang members". Meanwhile, the business elite that Bush helped to oust Aristide is demanding that the UN do more to "against violence", but that could easily mean helping them suppress Aristide's poor supporters.
Shadow zones in Bush's Iraq policy:
the issues he never
talks about.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Australia and the US are offering an alternative to regulation, for preventing global warming. You could call it "invisible handwaving".
Sharon is Not a Man of Peace.
Poland has sentenced a journalist to prison for criticizing a politician.
The Bush forces say they can't identify the soldiers that kicked and
punched an Iraqi prisoner until he was unconscious. The file was
deleted in a computer crash,
they say.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Congress adopted a shameful law denying Guantanamo prisoners access to US courts to enforce US laws (such as the prohibition of torture). The Supreme Court is now looking at whether that cancels the cases already filed by Guantanamo prisoners.
The defense lawyers in Guantanamo military tribunals have
denounced
them as unjust, and at least one, a reservist who is a civilian
lawyer, fears he will lose his civilian lawyer's license merely for
participating in the unjust proceedings.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with Noam Chomsky, about Iraq, the Democratic Party, and what it means to declare war on a tactic such as "terrorism".
An Ecuatorian in the US was hit by a stray bullet on New Years Eve.
She went to a hospital, which
refused to treat her because she could
not pay.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Another article (which I don't have a URL for) says that she was in danger of losing her eye if not treated, but the hospital told her that her problem was not serious.
This "non-profit" hospital has in fact been
making a lot of money.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Bush forces soldiers, while home on leave, are under pressure to give out propaganda to the local press.
In November, the Bush forces handed over a palace to the "Iraqi government forces". Who promptly looted it.
The Bush forces didn't even investigate the torture claims of an Iraqi prisoner, the ACLU has found. They dropped the investigation without questioning even one soldier.
Where is Israel's
Palestinian negotiating partner?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Soldiers from the Bush forces spoke favorably to Congressman Murtha at a "town meeting".
The judge in Saddam Hussein's trial has resigned because of pressure from the "Iraqi government" to make the trial less fair.
The information in the "Downing Street memo", that Bush had arranged for "intelligence" to show grounds for attacking Iraq, came from CIA Director Tenet.
Will General Miller be prosecuted for introducing torture to Guantanamo?
A
"doomsday vault" will try to preserve all agricultural plant varieties.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Bush wants to use Arab troops to occupy Iraq.
Illegal NSA surveillance started before 9/11, as soon as Bush got in power.
A BBC article in Iran's nuclear program presented this quote: "People should worry about a populist religious fundamentalist having his finger on a nuclear button" (from Jay in Liverpool).
I think this was intented, in ironic British humor, to compare the President of Iran with the President of the US.
Frog Extinctions Linked to Global Warming. 1/3 of all frog species are now threatened.
A BBC article on Iran's nuclear program presented this quote: "People should worry about a populist religious fundamentalist having his finger on a nuclear button" (from Jay in Liverpool).
I think this was intented, in ironic British humor, to compare the President of Iran with the President of the US.
Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running.
Belarus adopted new laws to criminalize protest activity.
Switzerland intercepted an Egyptian government memo confirming the existence of secret US prisons in various European countries, including Romania, Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Then the intercepted memo was leaked to the press.
The Swiss Cabinet condemned the leak of papers. It seems more concerned about leaks than about the monstrous conduct reported by the leak. Don't they remember that the Geneva Conventions were negotiated in Switzerland?
Russell Tice, ex-NSA employee, talks about massive NSA spying that he believes was illegal.
Elizabeth Holtzman, who voted in Congress to impeach Nixon,
presents the case for the impeachment of Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraq Pledge of Resistance group in Baltimore has
proof that the NSA
spied on them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Amnesty International has
new accusations of torture in Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
According to legal experts, the the case for
impeachment of Bush is
solid, and the US is in a constitutional crisis. (You'd never think
so from looking at the US media.) But the Republicans won't allow
impeachment no matter what Bush might do--so what
must America do to
rescue the Constitution?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI has internally adopted the policy of labeling civil disobedience as "terrorism". Nonviolent organizations that criticize government and business are being investigated on this basis.
Bliar claims to make a priority of preserving endangered species, but he's cutting wildlife research, so he doesn't really mean what he says.
Botswana has imposed fees for children in secondary school.
In recent decades, the IMF (with the US behind it) has forced many countries to abolish free education. Nothing could be more damaging to a country's future. I don't know whether the IMF is involved here; can anyone find out?
Many seabirds died on the US west coast, for lack of fish to eat. The fish were not there becase their food was not there. It comes down to an unusual wind pattern.
Such things can happen randomly, but I think there's a big chance that global warming is responsible.
Iran defied the IAEA and resumed unspecified "nuclear research".
I feel anxiety about Iran with nuclear weapons, but more anxiety about the US with nuclear weapons. Other recent notes present indications that the US is actually planning to use nuclear weapons.
When the IRS freezes taxpayers' refunds, because it suspects them of tax fraud, it doesn't tell them. If the auditors decide not to audit a taxpayer after all, the IRS doesn't tell him.
When IRS officials defend this form of screwing the public, that alone shows they are not fit for being in charge of anything important to the public.
A journalist investigating fraud in the Bush forces was arrested by soldiers shooting live ammunition. Fortunately they didn't hit him or his children. He was also fortunate not to be kept in prison for months or years, as other randomly arrested people have been. But his videos, made for the Guardian, were confiscated.
This is a small illustration of what the Iraqi resistance is fighting against.
As Haiti continues descending into chaos, the commander of the UN "stabilization force" was found dead in what looks like a suicide--but it's very suspicious.
The precipitous decline of vultures in India is due to a drug used to treat sick cattle.
Indian film-maker Rakesh Sharma is suing the city of New York, with the help of the ACLU, because the police arrested him for "filming without a permit".
Bush is blocking Brazil from selling airplanes to Venezuela. Chavez is threatening various kinds of reprisal.
The NSA is spying on a US domestic peace group.
The Spanish government has arrested people for recruiting others to fight in Iraq against the army occupying their country.
A few decades ago, thousands of people were recruited in other countries to fight in Spain against tyranny. The government of Spain should recognize the legitimacy of such recruiting, and should not interfere when people are recruited in Spain to fight against tyranny in Iraq.
US citizens:
If you have a senator on the Judiciary committee, call and say: "Don't allow Alito in!"
It was Alito who suggested the idea of presidential "signing statements" in which presidents can say "I think I am above this law." Do you want Alito to be on the Supreme Court when it votes on whether this really negates the ban on torture?
| Arlen Specter (PA) | Orrin Hatch (UT) | Charles Grassley (IA) |
| Jon Kyl (AZ) | Mike DeWine (OH) | Jeff Sessions (AL) |
| Lindsey Graham (SC) | John Cornyn (TX) | Sam Brownback (KS) |
| Tom Cobur (OK) | Patrick J. Leahy (VT) | Edward Kennedy (MA) |
| Joseph R. Biden Jr (DE) | Herb Kohl (WI) | Dianne Feinstein (CA) |
| Russ Feingold (WI) | Chuck Schumer (NY) | Richard Durbin (IL) |
In another blow to freedom of speech, the US has
prohibited anonymous
email (and phone calls) intended to "annoy". Annoyance is a rather weak
criterion, so this law is dangerous.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
AIPAC works politically in the US to promote Israeli interests. Its employees were been charged with espionage. It has used its close connections with neocon officials to work to get the US to attack Iran.
If the Israeli government is serious about cracking down on
organized crime, it should investigate the construction of settlements
in Palestine--often done using government money, but without government
approval, on stolen land.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
They get their building permits
illegally too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime now disparages NATO as "unreliable" for its purposes.
I hope so.
The Department of "Homeland Security"--that is, Committee for Public Safety--now enjoys the power to arbitrarily open all mail coming into the US. Their tastes in so doing show that protection from real terrorism cannot be the motive.
Three Republican senators have criticized Bush for claiming he can ignore the recently adopted ban on torture.
Bush has moved from privately disregarding the laws to openly claiming the power of a dictator.
A letter from a journalist, imprisoned without trial by the US government, describes continual unnecessary punishment--for having one's hand under the blanket, for leaving a few grains of rice on the floor, for a small missing piece of a plastic bag. As well as beatings of shackled prisoners. The only possible purpose is to crush the spirit.
The Bush regime will never let these men go, because they might perhaps want revenge for what the Bush regime has done to them. The Bush regime has reached the lowest level of moral degradation, where one evil already committed becomes the excuse for the next evil.
Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi says that Saddam Hussein should be murdered, not put on trial.
Bush, no fan himself of the right to a fair trial, might find this a little embarrassing.
In Iraq, even the children have learned to hate America. Even those who were born in America.
The Bush forces built a wall around an Iraqi village and now plan to check everyone going in and out. Much as in Palestine.
In India, about half a million fetuses are aborted each year for being female. This could help reduce India's population growth in the future, since the extra males won't be able to have children on their own. It also might help eliminate nasty customs such as demand for dowries.
Abortion is a right, regardless of the gender of the fetus. We must firmly condemn any attempt to attack women's right to an abortion based on what factors they use to decide.
The police who directly killed an important Ukrainian journalist are being tried for murder. As of yet, the politicians who ordered the killing have not been charged.
A recently retired UK general says that Blair should be impeached.
Attending a human rights meeting in Baghdad.
John Yoo, Bush's favorite anti-lawyer, argues that the President has the right to torture children in order to get information.
When a brutal regime sinks to this level of depravity, the whole world ought to drive it out of power, and charge all its officials with war crimes.
This parody, which is funnier than you would expect, also seems to accurately describe the arguments made by Bush and Yoo.
A division of Microsoft was proud to censor a Chinese blogger who
criticized the firing of journalists (see previous pol note).
Microsoft deleted his blog text and didn't even save a copy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israel plans to let some Palestinian candidates campaign in Jerusalem, and not others.
This would automatically make the Palestinian election an unfair election.
Electronic equipment includes lots of poisonous chemicals, and instead of recycling, it is sent to China where people poison themselves taking it apart.
The US Army dropped the charges against the only officer accused for two prisoners in Afghanistan who were beaten to death whil shackled.
This shows what the Bush regime thinks about torture.
Uri Avnery on Sharon's legacy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The UN envoy to Burma has quit, because Burma has not allowed him into the country for two years.
Spanish sea holiday areas are becoming so urbanized that they are
driving away the tourists they want to attract.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
In the long run, if masses of people from Northern Europe keep flying to such places for vacations, global warming and sea-level rises will turn their homes into warm beach areas. Unless the conveyor shuts down and freezes them into uninhabitability.
The Bush regime is drawing up plans for temporary or permanent military control of the US, including surveillance of political dissent.
The Blair regime has given police the power to arrest people for offenses as minor as littering, and to permanently save their photos, fingerprints, and DNA samples. This is an all-purpose recipe for harassment and surveillance--presented, as usual, as a solution for other problems that don't need or justify such drastic measures.
The NSA
destroyed evidence of its illegal spying,
to avoid being criticized (or prosecuted).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Bush regime illegal spying goes beyond the NSA, and started before 9/11. The regime's officials use the most absurd arguments to excuse it--a sign of the effectiveness of their control of the media, since they couldn't get away with this if the press were inclined to jump on their absurd statements.
The UN security council is
starting to put pressure on the
Burmese dictatorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
If Bush had really wanted to spread democracy and freedom, he would have sent an army to Burma rather than Iraq.
By the way, it is not correct to call Burma "Myanmar". That name was chosen by the illegitimate military rulers, and is rejected by the elected president of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi. Accepting their name grants them legitimacy.
Sharon's successor will probably continue the unilateral policy of annexation and ethnic cleansing of large parts of the West Bank, while refusing to participate in peace talks.
The Palestinian Authority has no one to talk with about peace.
The Haitian rulers are having a dispute which shows how corrupt they are. Bush installed them after forcing Aristide from office.
The Pakistanis tortured in Greece are pressing their accusations against the Greek and UK intelligence agents who tortured them.
Representative De Lay has given up on regaining his post as majority leader.
His replacement will surely be equally unscrupulous, but we can hope he is less effective.
Lurking behind discussions of environmental protection and sustainable development: the population issue.
"Magnet therapy" has been proved a fraud.
An Islamist Sunni party in Iraq is developing a pattern of selling out to the Bush regime.
John Pilger: the Death of Freedom (in the UK and the US).
The UK government has admitted that its accusations of Iranian meddling in Iraq were false. Bush had used these as examples to justify threats to attack Iran.
Bush and the cult of presidential power.
Current Bush regime war plans involve use nuclear weapons as a matter of convenience in future wars, such as the planned attack on Iran.
If Bush really does this, nuclear nonproliferation as an ideal will be dead; nothing will discourage proliferation except fear of the US. But not everyone needs to be afraid. I expect that Pakistan will provide nuclear weapons technology to various other countries after that.
The Bush forces intentionally bombed a house in Baiji, Iraq, and killed a whole family. They did so based on unverified suspicion that members of the resistance were there. This method of fighting the resistance is guaranteed to kill lots of civilians.
The US media reaction illustrates the many methods normally used to minimize and excuse such killings.
The US pressures and bribes other countries give its agents and citizens immunity from ICC prosecution for war crimes. Jordan resisted this, but appears to be surrendering.
85% of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel are tortured.
Another Cambodian human rights activist has been arrested. The crime: putting up a banner criticizing the prime minister.
I am not sure I agree with the criticism on the banner. Hun Sen cooperated with the Vietnamese who rescued Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, and I only wish they had done it sooner.
But whether those views are justified or not is a side issue. The crucial point now is that dissidents have a right to speak.
Several deep-sea fish species face extinction due to overfishing. One species' population is down by 98%. It could take decades for these species to recover, even if they are protected now.
Two editors of a Malaysian newspaper have been forced to resign after the paper identified a woman, who had been stripped in a police station, erroneously as Chinese. The government has shown no interest in whether the police's conduct was incorrect.
Blair did the same thing to the BBC a couple of years ago.
As Bush signed the bill containing McCain's anti-torture amendment, he publicly declared that he was above this law and could ignore it when he wished to.
Mordechai Vanunu thinks Israel may use nuclear weapons against Iran.
Many members of congress are being investigated for bribery, now that Abramoff has agreed to confess everything.
Australia has had its hottest year on record, but its government remains inclined to bicker about how to reduce future global warming, rather than take action.
If civilization can't get past such bickering, it is likely to be destroyed by its own stupidity.
A conservative Republican (at least it seems so) compares Bush to Hitler--for declaring that his word is law, and trying to crush the rest of government's ability to resist him.
It has been well established that the Nazis arranged the Reichstag fire; it surprises me that the writer says that it "played into their hands". Perhaps he does not want to suggest that the Bush regime participated in the arrangements for the Sep 11 attacks.
Israel is preventing Palestinian election candidates from campaigning in East Jerusalem, in a unilateral move towards annexation. Palestinians are divided on whether to delay the vote if they cannot do it properly.
The Bush forces tried to buy the support of Sunni Muslim scholars and clerics in Iraq.
The Association of Muslim Scholars says this can't be true.
I trust the first report more. If the Lincoln Group bought some scholars, some people in the company have to know this; the Association of Muslim Scholars would not know. If some of their members did sell themselves to Bush, they surely would keep this secret in their community.
However, I don't think very many of them will be for sale.
Peru is asking for the extradition of former president Fujimori, for crimes including murder.
The Iraqi resistance is becoming more effective at preventing the Bush forces from selling stolen Iraqi oil.
International trade in caviar has been banned. The direct cause is that the countries which have sturgeon stocks could not agree on quotas, but the underlying cause is that these sturgeon have been pressed towards extinction by the demand for caviar.
Another columnist supports impeachment.
Bush is canceling the "rebuilding of Iraq" after having done very little real rebuilding. I guess the pretense served its purpose.
There have long been accusations that Ariel Sharon participated in corruption. Now there is evidence to back it up.
Evo Morales has decided to cut his own pay, and that of his ministers.
Italy is considering murder charges against the Bush forces soldier
who shot at Giuliana Sgrena and killed Nicola Calipari. Following the
usual practice of police, the Bush forces fabricated a story to excuse
the shooting, but the Italians are not buying it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli border police arrested a Palestinan--then
killed him by tying him to a donkey and making it run.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
And it seems not to be the first time.
Patti Saintangelo, mother of 5, is being sued by the RIAA because her children did music sharing. She refuses to settle, and people have set up a site to donate to her legal cause.
www.fightgoliath.org
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
The claim that the Department of Homeland Security sent an agent to visit a student who tried to borrow Mao's little red book was false.
North Korean guest workers in the Czech Republic are effectively
slaves. The Czech government says it's "voluntary".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This is a good example of how "consent" is not the same as freedom, why there must be limits on how people can surrender their rights, why there must be inalienable rights.
The Israeli government shares the responsibility for the countless
crimes that Israeli settlers commit against their Palestinian neighbors.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
This article says that the Bush forces explicitly encouraged the looting of Baghdad's museums and universities just after the conquest.
A translation of part:
The surprising detail in every depiction was but the allegation that the American soldiers often made the lootings possible in the first place by breaking or shooting open well secured gates and then inviting the people around to loot: "Go in, Ali Baba, it's yours!" ? the Americans shouted said Iraqi eye wittneses... An employee of the UN development program observed that Americans intruded the technical university, opened the computers and took their harddisk with them before the looters pursued their business.
Abdul Halim Khaddam, former vice-president of Syria, says that President Assad explicitly threatened to kill Rafik Hariri.
Supporters of Assad, in an outburst of Bush logic, accused Khaddam of treason for making this accusation.
There will be an international investigation of vote-rigging in Iraq.
When the US media cover Israeli attacks on Palestinians, it always presents them as "retaliation".
The Israelis and Palestinians are involved in a long-running feud in which each side can cite acts of cruel violence by the other. Most of them are committed by the Israelis, who have more power to do so. Often a lull is broken by an Israeli attack, and Israelis know this, but our media don't admit it.
Anti-Imperialists Beware - Bush Is Reading Again
The Bush regime has over 100,000 unofficial mercenaries, almost as many as the acknowledged soldiers. Will it "withdraw the [official] troops" and turn the war over to mercenaries?
Evo Morales, president elect of Bolivia,
joined Chavez in calling Bush
a "terrorist".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-21 because the old link was broken.]
I think it's an exaggeration to claim that he is the only terrorist, but he is probably the only one that Bolivia has to fear.
More Guantanamo prisoners are on hunger strike, and being force-fed through pipes pushed through their noses into their stomachs.
The refusal to allow reputable neutral observers full access to a prison has always been a sign of a tyrannical regime. That's what it was when the Soviet Union did it, and that's what it is today when the US does it. The US thus becomes heir to all the disgust that people felt for the Soviet Union.
The Bush forces "encourage" soldiers on leave to say good things.
They cannot claim this is mere exercize of the soldiers' freedom of speech, when they punish the same soldiers if they express another opinion.
A Washington Post story reveals that the Bush forces are supporting a TV station in Iraq, and mispresenting this. (They pretend that their support does not give them effective control over the station.)
Also noteworthy is the way they call US media traitors if it shows any sort of success of the Iraqi resistance. This is part of a long-term right-wing strategy of accusing the US media of left-wing bias, whenever it doesn't entirely support the right-wing.
In Cambodia, a leading human rights worker, Kem Sokha, has been charged with the crime of defamation. An opposition leader has been sentenced to prison for defamation of the ruling party.
Can anyone find me the text of the banner that Kem Sokha displayed?
40% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had "strong ties to al Qa'ida", and a quarter believe he had weapons of mass destruction before the Bush invasion.
These figures, although decreasing somewhat, reflect the ability of the Bush regime (or any regime that the corporate media support) to override the truth. They illustrate a threat to freedom and democracy that will continue to threaten freedom in the US even if the Bush forces are kicked out of Iraq.
Bush announced an investigation to find out who revealed the NSA's crimes to the public.
The Bush regime philosophy follows that of China. Whatever the regime does, cannot be wrong; if it brings shame on them, the wrong was not in committing the act, only in telling the public about it.
The White House is using nasty techniques (borrowed from commercial web sites) to track visitors.
100 journalists went on strike at the Beijing News, whose editor was removed by the government.
The Iraqi resistance has already proved that the neocons were wrong in their belief that they could terrorize a country into surrender through "shock and awe".
Here is a complete translation of the Süddeutsche Zeitung article that says that the Bush forces explicitly encouraged the looting of museums in Iraq?
President Carter's new book takes direct aim at Bush, saying that he is destroying American values.
The article mentions two other interesting books.
Iraqi Kurds are using the Bush forces as cover to prepare their forces to fight Iraqi Arabs.
This kind of strategy is not unusual. I seem to recall that Indonesians used the opportunity provided by the Japanese occupation in World War II to train an army. The Japanese thought this army was going to help them, but what its members had in mind was to fight for independence from the Dutch. I wish I had my copy of Sukarno's biography here to double-check that.
Cindy Sheehan is targeting closet Republicans such as Hillary Clinton for protests, as well as admitted Republicans.
The Bush forces are trying to export one of the features of American "democracy"--more and more people in prison.
Bush changed ICAN rules to give governments more power over top level domains. Kazakhstan has already used this to practice censorship.
The Last Stand of the American Republic.
The editor of the most daring Chinese newspaper has been fired. He tried to act as if he had freedom of the press.
One of the charges against Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has been dropped. Both charges are due to his having spoken about the mass murders of Armenians and Kurds.
This partial step is not enough to make Turkey a country that respects human rights. Turkey must reform its laws so that no one prosecuted for criticizing the state.
Global warming's effects are accelerating. Without the effects of
disease-causing particulate pollution, it would already be even worse.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Australia privatized the "care" of refugees. The company is now in hot water for killing a baby.
This fits a standard pattern--companies say "We can do this better and cheaper than the state", but they make it no better, only more expensive. By now, this argument won't fool anyone, except those who want to be fooled. Alas, that usually includes the corporate-owned politicians and the corporate-owned media.
A Chinese government study reports that 80% of companies violate labor laws.
Meanwhile, the figure of almost 170 million Chinese unemployed shows how "free trade" treaties function in practice a low-wage treaties. Until all those 170 million get jobs, global wages are not likely to go up.
France is considering affirmative action to counter demonstrable ethnic prejudice in hiring.
The Bush forces say that the government of Iraq can't be trusted to run prisons because it might torture the prisoners.
Mr Bush, didn't you decide these activities are not torture when carried out on your behalf?
Three years ago we already learned that the NSA was doing
illegal spying--on UN
delegations.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
You know that wealth and income are increasingly concentrated.
Here's
more information about how bad it is.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is right: the US faces imminent danger. In fact, several imminent dangers--all from the same ultimate source.
The Bush regime is stonewalling congressmen asking for information about how Bush decided to attack Iraq.
The DEA continued its policy of maximum cruelty by raiding a San Francisco medical marijuana facility. (They ignored the nearby crack-houses.)
The Bush forces used white phosphorus shells to attack people, even though the US Army says this is illegal.
The Bush forces first denied using WP. Then they said that they used it for illumination, and it's irrelevant that people were in the target area. In Bush's War on Integrity, and anything can be described as anything else. His motto is, "What is truth?"
CIA kidnapers in Italy fell into the trap of
cell phone surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Joost Lagendijk, member of the European Parliament, faces possible criminal charges in Turkey because he accused Turkish troops of provoking violence with Kurdish separatists.
I think the Turkish nationalists who are pushing for this must wish to prevent Turkey from joining the EU. The Turkish government may not like to see a complaint raised against someone who will play a role in the decision of whether to admit Turkey to the EU, but as long as they have censorship laws, it leaves itself wide open for this.
Reportedly Sharon will have surgery to repair a hole in his heart. Now we understand why he has been so callous and cruel: his humane concern for other people must have leaked out through the hole.
Perhaps the surgery will enhance the prospect for peace.
EU fishermen blocked a ban on North Sea cod fishing because it would cut their income. The WWF warns this the cod are on their way to being wiped out; don't the fisherment realize that will cut their income even more. They are simply too short-sighted to survive in this world.
And if our species continues wiping out its food supplies with such stupid decisions, it will prove we were all too short-sighted to survive.
Most of the EU countries are failing to carry out their obligations under the Kyoto treaty.
The Greek government participated in the abduction and torture of Pakistanis in Greece, along with the UK government.
Torture by governments is much more dangerous than the private terrorism they claim to be "protecting" us from.
The music factories are being investigated for price-fixing for downloading music.
No wonder they say they "lose" so much when people share--they gain the benefits of monopoly when people don't share.
Italy is
considering murder charges against the Bush forces soldier who shot at
Giuliana Sgrena and killed Nicola Calipari.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
Following the usual practice of police, the Bush forces fabricated a story to excuse the shooting, but the Italian prosecutors don't accept it.
Republicans cut funds for student loans, and for welfare (but only the kind that's for poor people).
Here is more information on how poor people will pay the price so Bush could cut taxes for the rich.
This law was rushed through with little debate.
How FEMA
threatens the US Constitution.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime is
already starting a plan to track the movements of
all cars in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The idea of charging more for road travel at busy times makes no sense. Drivers already face a considerable penalty for driving when the roads are crowded: it takes longer, and they use more gas, which costs more. If that doesn't make them change the time they travel, extra tolls won't do it either.
What we really want to encourage drivers to do is drive less, regardless of what time. The rational way to do that is by raising the gas tax, but that's exactly what Bush won't allow.
The Bush forces confirm that air attacks on Iraq have greatly increased.
One nasty thing that Islamic governments do is persecute anyone who was a Muslim and converts to anything else. Even Malaysia, which in most respects is not extremist, prohibits this. It is worse in countries such as Iran and Iraq.
In Iran, a celebrated Bahai prisoner of conscience died after 15 years in prison. Someone printed a false story that he had converted to Islam, but since in fact he was still a Bahai, the court took this excuse to pretend he had converted back. He was sentenced to death.
The Islamist climate of "liberated" Iraq puts Iraqi Christians in danger, including the danger they will be punished if any Muslims convert to Christianity.
Bush, who makes such a fuss about being Christian, probably doesn't want to talk about this; but if pressed to, he would probably say that God must have wanted this happen when telling Bush to invade Iraq.
Why not let April Glaspie tell what she really said to Saddam Hussein about whether the US would defend Kuwait?
An Iraqi student leader who organized a protest about election fraud was kidnaped and killed--apparently by a death squad.
"The law, it's me".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Some of the Sunnis elected to the Iraqi parliament won't be allowed to serve, because they were associated in the past with the Ba'ath party.
If Iraq had really been liberated, as Bush likes to pretend, Iraqis would probably not generally vote for people who had played important Ba'ath party roles. They remember what the Ba'ath party did when it was in power; they can also see how much any individual participated in its wrongs. But they have a worse enemy to deal with now.
Sharon seems to be planning an air attack on Iran, timed to help his election campaign.
Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid says that the Indonesian
police and intelligence are behind the terrorist bombings in
Indonesia, that the supposed Islamic extremist groups such as Jemaah
Islamiah have been infiltrated by provocateurs. And there's other
evidence to back it up.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The US army tried to order, and intimidate, Bush forces soldiers' families to close their private web site, or give the army control of it.
Palestinians are regularly punished by Israel
simply for being related
to Palestinians who were killed by Israelis--on the grounds that this
makes them more likely to want to retaliate.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The writer has made a clever connection, because this shows that the Israeli government recognizes--when it suits them to do so--that its policies of violence towards Palestinians create more potential terrorists to retaliate.
Tali Fahima accepted a plea bargain, pleading guilty to a series of minor crimes.
Tali Fahima, an Israeli woman, was accused of collaborating with militants, but it appears all she really did was escort Palestinian children to school. (That's not an easy job in occupied Palestine.)
The government's willingness to bargain supports the idea that the accusations were false, but outcome was a victory for the government anyway. It has succeeded in terrorizing Israelis who might wish to associate with Palestinians, and without even having to present any evidence against one.
Israeli settlers have build dozens of illegal "outposts" on
Palestinian land; the army does not remove them, because secretly the
Israeli government supports them. So the nonviolent protestors of
Bil'in built one outpost on their own land. The army removed it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
This serves to demonstrate the baldfaced dishonesty of the government's application of its own laws.
After the caravan outpost was destroyed, the villagers put up a new outpost: a tent. An Arab and an Israeli were arrested and beaten while handcuffed; the Arab was severely injured and is now in the hospital.
Abu Baker Mansha in the UK was convicted of thoughtcrime, based on
evidence suggesting he
might have been contemplating killing someone.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
If left alone, he might eventually have committed murder. Or he might have done nothing. To imprison people for things they might have done, for things they may have considered doing, is obviously unjust. In typical Blair style, it has been done by writing the law to define suspicious circumstances as the crime. Such a law is a far greater threat to society than a lone man with a gun.
Ethiopea has charged journalists and antipoverty activists with
treason alongside opposition politicians. They face
execution.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
Although the government's actions are outrageous, a part of its criticisms of the opposition may be true. It is not implausible that the US was trying to fund a mass campaign to drive the government from power; this occurred in the Ukraine and in Georgia, for instance. However, that would not excuse the government from (apparently) rigging elections in the first place.
The Israeli annexation wall has made Bethlehem an "immense prison".
Are the Bush forces disguising uranium poisoning as leishmaniasis?
The meaning of Iraqi sovereignty was demonstrated as the Bush forces depopulated a village near Fallujah. They said the village was too near their base, so they made all the inhabitants homeless.
It's clear how these troops think about the Iraqis they are supposedly helping to "liberate".
There are many reasons for impeaching Bush and Cheney, based on the fundamental ideas embodied in the US Constitution.
Cindy Sheehan writes about the mothers of other men killed by the Bush invasion of Iraq. Some of those men were soldiers in the Bush forces; one was a Spanish journalist; one was in the same battle as Casey Sheehan, but on the other side.
Iraq: Vote Early and Vote Often.
Many Iraqis don't like that policy.
The UK plans to record the movements of all cars, using computers
attached to TV cameras.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Blair's aim, as we have seen for a long time, total surveillance of everyone. This system is only partial surveillance; it may catch some thieves, but they will surely discover holes in it and learn to exploit them. It will work better with dissidents.
A bill proposed in the US Congress would require analog digital and video recorders to recognize special "watermarks" and refuse to record.
The movie companies have been attacking our freedom persistently for a decade--they are no friends of ours. However, for many people the idea of a total boycott of Hollywood seems unthinkable. So I have an alternate proposal: never pay to see a movie unless you have specific reason to believe it is a good one.
This is not an absolute boycott of Hollywood, but in practice it comes pretty close.
The opposition presidential candidate in Egypt has been sentenced to prison for forgery of signatures to register the party. Supporters protested inside and outside the courtroom--apparently the party has plenty of real support, which makes the accusation implausible.
The US has propped up Mubarak as a dictator for decades with lots of money. The current US criticism of Mubarak would be the right thing to say if the US were not still keeping him in power at the same time. The main opposition to Mubarak comes from the Muslim Brotherhood, which is islamist though not as radical as islamists in some other countries.
The Bush forces arrested the Iraqi minister of the interior, whose ministry ran various torture prisons and runs the death squads.
The article is right that this demonstrates that the "sovereignty" of the new Iraqi government is a sham--if we didn't already know.
This does not mean it was wrong to arrest him. I entirely support the arrest of Bush regime officials who preside over torture and death squads in Iraq. But if this policy is to be meaningful, it must not be limited to the low-level officials who are Iraqi. Their American higher-ups such as Bush and Cheney must be arrested too.
Bush forces soldiers say Bush underestimates their capabilities when he claims they cannot leave Iraq quickly.
Bush is hoping that reducing the number of occupying ground troops in Iraq will reduce non-Iraqi casualties--and that Americans won't know or care about the Iraqis killed by Bush forces bombers.
Dirty Uranium in Iraq is coming back to haunt the US.
I prefer to call it "Dirty Uranium" rather than "Depleted Uranium", because bombs that spread radioactive dust are called "dirty bombs" in all other cases.
Calls to impeach Bush are spreading to the edges of the mainstream.
The Bush regime's searches without search warrants go even further than previously thought.
The IMF gave the Iraqi puppet government a big loan.
Since the IMF operates mainly under the control of the US, there is surely more to this than is described in that story. I might just be a matter of distributing or delaying the costs of the occupation with its death squads. But it could be more. IMF loans usually have conditions, and which are usually nice for foreign investors and nasty for the populace. I wonder what the conditions of these loans are.
The NSA has been spying on
all international phone calls.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Berlusconi defends fascism--and torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
When Palestinians fire rockets from Gaza, Israel plans to respond by firing artillery...at civilian areas.
Until now, Israeli bombings of Palestinian civilian areas have been given the excuse that some Palestinian military leader was in the vicinity. Now that is dispensable.
As for the other proposal, to cut electricity for all of Gaza, here's what Human Rights Watch has to say:
See also
here.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese reporter faces charges of "revealing state secrets" for telling the New York Times that Jiang Zemin was going to retire from one of his offices.
When the Bushmen call for prosecution of people who tell the public about their crimes, they're taking lessons from China.
French MPs Vote to Legalise Internet File-Sharing
Opinion polls in Israel show that half the population favor
sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
This would help make it possible to negotiate a peace deal, if Israeli leaders wished to negotiate a peace deal. Paradoxically Sharon remains popular, and his goal is ethnic cleansing.
The Bush forces released 8 Iraqi prisoners, formerly labeled as "high value", admitting they are "no threat".
The Bush forces did not explain why they previously had a different view of these people, or acknowledge that the previous view is mistaken. This suggests that these changing labels reflect nothing more than what the Bush forces want to do with a captive--not evidence or facts.
UK police are now investigating possible UK involvement in CIA torture
flights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Bliar recently refused to carry out an investigation of this, saying it would "add fuel" to people's concern about the matter. He thinks people should take his word!
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are
spreading. We have squandered the
benefit of antibiotics by using them carelessly.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
Wal-Mart was fined in California for denying workers lunch breaks.
Europe-wide arrest warrants are out for CIA kidnapers.
The families of four Bush forces mercenaries killed in Falluja in 2004 are suing the contractor, saying that it sent them on a mission without adequate numbers or weapons.
I am not unhappy that the Iraqis killed these unofficial soldiers (who might be called "illegal combatants" in Bush regime terminology).
A proposal for peacefully avoiding Iranian development of nuclear
weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The long term issue is the US rogue-state attitude towards use of nuclear weapons, which predates Bush. This encourages other countries to regard nuclear nonproliferation as just another name for US bullying.
Just how bad is the deal that was made at Hong Kong?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
In the UK, the copyright police
demand royalties for playing an
instrument before you buy it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The copyright bullies know only one emotion, greed, and recognize no limits to their intrusion on people's lives.
The Bush regime asked Turkey to support war against Iran or Syria.
(Turkey refused to cooperate with the conquest of Iraq.)
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
British agents kidnaped and tortured Pakistanis in Greece, then released them with threats to hurt their families if they told anyone what had happened.
Microsoft faces fines of over 2 million dollars per day unless it carries out the EU's order to provide certain interface specs. True to form, Microsoft has pretended to comply, but the specs it offered were woefully incomplete.
Microsoft says this order violates its "intellectual property rights". Microsoft uses that term to create the false impression of a basic principle that never existed. In general, anyone who uses the term "intellectual property" is either trying to confuse you, or confused himself. In this case, we can be confident it is the former.
The US senate compromised to extend the U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. act for 6 months, in effect making more time to discuss what to do.
This comes after a filibuster blocked the full extension that Bush wanted.
Democracy campaigners in Hong Kong blocked to plans to change the constitution of the territory, plans which did not lead to democracy.
Chris Hogg seems to be trying to excuse China for denying democracy to anyone who won't necessarily be subservient in applying it.
An amendment to the military spending bill will require the Bush forces to try to count civilian casualties.
I suppose they will undercount, but nonetheless it may help embarrass them.
What the Laws of War say about the Bush forces' conduct in Iraq. For instance, changing the constitution of Iraq is a war crime, and everything that the Bush-installed puppet government does is the Bush forces' responsibility.
The ease of rigging elections on Diebold machines has forced even Governor Bush to recognize the problem.
More information on how the insecurity was demonstrated.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The voting machine company's own "repair" personnel have easy access to the machines; in fact, there's testimony that someone from the manufacturer visited election machines in Ohio just before and after the 2004 election. Thus, direct personal access to any part of the system is not an unreasonable condition in testing the machines for fraudworthiness.
I know of only two safe ways to do the election:
* Voter-verified paper ballots.
* Hard-wired machines that cannot be altered without visibly breaking them. (This is done in India.)
More about Clint Curtis, who testifies he was hired to design a program for election rigging by a man, Feeney, who was since elected to congress.
Various Iraqis have accused militias of coersing voters.
These militias surely include the Badr brigades, connected with Iran, whose members are a large part of the Iraqi police.
Of course, Allawi with his ties to the US and the suspicion of stealing lots of money might not have got many votes even without coercion.
The parties that didn't do well are threatening to boycott the Parliament.
One of the judges on the secret FISA court, which exists to approve wiretaps, has resigned because Bush made a mockery of that court's job.
Media Lens documents how much even the most liberal of newspapers is compelled to uphold the business agenda even while sometimes criticizing it. It documents the pattern of the "engineering of consent".
Since Israel allows settlers to build and expand illegal "outposts" on
Palestinian land, without hindrance, now the Palestinians of Bil'in have
built an outpost on their own land.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The German government let an Uzbek government torturer enter,
and leave again, disregarding the lawsuit filed by his victims.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Representative Conyers has
introduced
resolutions to censure
Bush and Cheney for causes such as launching a war based on lies,
torture, and harassment of political opposition.
[References updated on 2018-05-03 because the old links were broken.]
In Iraq, even if the Bush forces are nowhere around, you're still not safe from them. Here are more details about the aerial bombardment of Iraq.
The Bush forces are not content will torturing and mistreating Iraqis. They lured men from India to work for them in virtual slave conditions, and in danger--and tortured them when they complained.
Iraq's Election Result: a Divided Nation.
Why did Bush order the NSA to spy on Americans when using the FISA procedure is so easy? Perhaps it's so he can spy on political opposition.
Dead soldiers' families' court case for an inquiry into why the UK joined the Bush forces has been rejected.
Republicans tried to sell off public land to mining companies, to help close the deficit caused by their tax cuts.
Censorship in Turkey is really rolling; 60 authors and reporters have been tried. Now a publisher is on trial for a minor side remark in a translated book.
Israel distrupted the Palestinian elections, forbidding residents of East Jerusalem from voting, because it doesn't like the prospects for who might win.
I suspect that "East Jerusalem" really includes various adjoining areas that Israel plans to annex to East Jerusalem.
More than one person has written to inform me about "typos" in the name of Tony Bliar. These inconsistencies are not accidental. Sometimes I use the old spelling, "Blair", which is still used by most news reports. Sometimes I use the more accurate spelling, "Bliar", which indicates the man's dishonesty.
A doctor from Falluja is in Brussels testifying about how the Bush forces destroyed the city. His testimony is here.
Thai police arrested Chinese refugees who were peacefully protesting
in front of the Chinese embassy. The protest was directed at rape and
murder of prisoners by Chinese police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Since fines of a million dollars a day failed to scare the Transport Workers Union, the Night-Mayor of New York calls them "cowardly".
Colin Powell says European governments knew about CIA "rendition" of suspects.
Powell disingenuously does not distinguish between those "renditions" which transported people to stand trial and those that transported them for torture--so the statement means less than it appears to. Europeans surely knew about the former. If they knew about the latter, they should be prosecuted for it. And from now on they must make it their business to know the difference.
The mass media stand ready to label great thinkiers as incompetents and fools, the moment they start to criticize the crimes of those in power.
In a society whose mass media follow the tyrant to support torture, wars of aggression, and imprisonment without trial, most people will support them--so anyone who doesn't follow along is automatically an "extremist".
Bush defends illegal NSA spying on Americans' phone calls.
When he calls this a "tough decision", that's yet another layer of lie. For Bush, deciding to set aside human rights is not tough--it's a pleasure.
The NSA's illegal spying on Americans helped convince the Senate to block extension of some parts of the U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. act. Alas, the democrats who sat on this spying issue give us little to hope for.
I can envision how the Bush forces could be driven out of Iraq by a combination of Iraqi resistance and American opposition. I don't know whether it will happen, but I can see how it might. But I can't see how we can free the US from the callous rich tyrants that rule it.
Tony Benn, for 50 years a UK Labor MP, sees more hope.
The Pentagon is already spying on protest groups and calling them "threats", but this is not enough for Bush. He wants to extend this to various sorts of "threats", meaning political activities.
The Turkish government is starting to take steps to end "honor killings", in which women are punished by their families for having been raped.
I understand the emotions that make some people support the death penalty. All I have to do is imagine the perpetrators of an "honor killing", and I feel like tearing them apart. But I will be a better person if I do not let those feelings run away with me; so I do not endorse the killing of prisoners. Life imprisonment is enough punishment to deter such crimes, if it is applied. The main challenge, for ending "honor killings", is to convict the killers at all.
A federal court ruled that "intelligent design" is just religious creationism in disguise, and that it cannot be taught as biology.
Extinction alert for
800 species--and how to prevent it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Many US businesses are sure that whoever comes after Bush
will institute CO2 emission limits.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
More about Evo Morales' victory.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
The New York City Transit Authority wants to cut health care for its employees despite its billion-dollar surplus. So they are on strike.
Progress in gel batteries could result in RFIDs readable from 300 feet. If one of them is inserted in something you carry, you could be scanned from a block away! Total monitoring of everyone's movements could be a reality.
Won't Bush be happy.
The reason why Bush persists in his lies, no matter how they are exposed, is that he expects to get away with them. With the media often supporting the lies, it often works.
Venezuela is close to completing the process of raising taxes that foreign oil companies pay. Exxon is holding out, but soon it will lose its leases entirely.
Evo Morales may start Bolivia moving forward on this process.
With all the dishonesty of the people who work for Bush, this one takes the cake. Even as political posturing, it is absurd.
The US has gone well beyond mere meddling in Colombia. Plan Colombia gives the government of Colombia detailed year-by-year instructions to follow. President Uribe, who accepted this, in effect reports to Bush.
Uri Avnery: Sharon,
the pied piper.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Evo Morales won the Bolivian election in the first round.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The WTO has taken another step to promote corporate globalization.
Poor countries seem to have gained small and remote concessions for
their agricultural exports, in exchange for major concessions to the
manufacturing megacorporations.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
This is not final, so there is still a chance for these whole round of talks to go into the trash where it belongs.
The main opposition leader in Uganda got on the ballot for president even though he faces charges of treason and terrorism.
Labeling the political opposition as "terrorist" is fashionable all around the world.
Du Pont believes its secrecy is more important than New Jersey
residents' health.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Two girls for every boy! But it's not Surf City, and it's caused by
chemical pollution--which causes various diseases too.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime is holding young children prisoner in places such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
A split in Fatah could reshape the future of Palestine's dealings with Israel.
More information about the student who tried to borrow
the Quotations of Chairman Mao--and the chilling effect that
this surveillance already has.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Rumsfeld says that the McCain amendment has no affect on the US military since their policy has always been not to torture anyone.
Previous notes show this is a lie.
A catalog of false statements made by Bush regime leaders about Iraq.
Are the disasters caused by Bush policies mistakes, unforseen consequences? What if they were intended?
Moving production to poor countries often increases CO2 emissions.
Katherine Jashinski refused to go to Iraq to fight for the Bush forces. She would rather face imprisonment than kill Iraqi civilians.
Here is her statement, posted by Courage to Resist.
See also www.CouragetoResist.org.
Human Rights Watch calls for trial of Sudan's leaders for war crimes.
Their air force
provides air support to militias that kill civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Sudan does not investigate its officials for complicity in this, yet objects to trying them outside the country, such as in the ICC. Does this remind you of another, more powerful rogue state?
The US media are supporting Bush's pretense that he personally can authorize the government to violate laws against domestic surveillance.
Members of Congress, and the New York Times, knew that the NSA was breaking the law by spying on Americans, but they did nothing for a whole year.
The idea of destroying the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches sounds like an absurd fantasy--wouldn't the police notice it? But even if Bush isn't lying about this, they could surely have got the attorney general to sign off on an emergency wiretap. So this is no excuse for trampling people's rights.
Al-Habashi says UK intelligence agents interrogated him in Pakistan, then gave him to the CIA to be taken to Guantanamo. The UK government just confirmed the first part.
The US tortured people in a secret prison in Afghanistan last year.
Israeli anarchists continue to join Palestinians in the nonviolent protests against robbing the lands of Bil'in.
Some Isrealis recognize that killing Palestinians reliably provokes retaliation. Ironically, an Israeli woman was killed by such retaliation immediately after predicting that it would come.
It's only the country's leaders that pretend to be too stupid to recognize this pattern.
An Israeli general suggested troops ought to be shot if they are morally reluctant to carry out illegal orders.
Microsoft is developing a product that lets you keep track of other people's whereabouts through their cell phones--as the police already do.
This is another reason not to carry a cell phone.
Governor Schwarzenegger rejected Tookie Williams' appeal for clemency;
Williams was then executed.
Part of the reason Schwarzenegger cited
was that Williams said he did not commit the murders he was convicted
of.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
I know little of the details of that case, but DNA evidence has shown that a substantial fraction of convicted murderers in the US are Innocent. And those who refuse to confess to the crimes they did not commit may be killed for their honesty.
The US "terrorist"
watchlist for airlines has 80,000 names.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
How the US deals with democracy in Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, and Iraq.
With Evo Morales, running for president of Bolivia.
His policies are rather mild opposition to the empire, and if I were a Bolivian, I would campaign for stronger opposition to global business' power.
The Iraqi resistance nonetheless saw enough value in the elections to urge Iraqis to vote--which is why there were no attacks on voters.
Bush-league sham democracy is not much good in itself, but it can do some good for Iraq if it leads Iraqis to demand the real thing. Real democracy in Iraq would mean that Iraqis, not Bushmen, decide what to do with Iraq's oil and its economy. To achieve this, they will need to kick the Bush forces out of power.
This may involve a political struggle, not necessarily only a military one. It would be most useful for some Iraqis to visit Bolivia, and study how the people drove out two presidents that were agents for global business. People who speak Spanish and Arabic might be needed to help as interpreters.
The McCain anti-torture amendment was destroyed by a compromise which added a loophole that the media have hardly noticed. The loophole doesn't look big, but it can be stretched by the CIA as far as they want to go.
A BBC video shows prison guards in Texas torturing helpless prisoners.
Information from Sibel Edmonds suggests a link between Plamegate and some neocons' involvement in a plot to help Turkey get nuclear weapons.
This connection is not proven; part of the reason we cannot tell whether it is true is that the Bush regime prevents Edmonds from telling us what she knows. However, there is no doubt that Bush is the enemy of the Constitution he is supposed to defend. When the rulers are traitors, patriotism can mean going into exile. Perhaps the best thing Sibel Edmonds could do for her adopted country is to flee to where its leaders cannot stop her from telling its people what she knows of the plots against it.
Homeland Security agents visited a U. Mass. student because he borrowed the Quotations of Chairman Mao through inter-library loan.
This one example would prove that surveillance and political intimidation goes far beyond what could be justified or legitimate in a free society. It also suggests a way to spam them: borrow the Little Red Book through inter-library loan! Then they will either have to waste lots of time, or pull back from doing what they shouldn't be doing anyway.
Bridgestone has been sued for treating its workers in Liberia
like slaves. It does not officially hire children, but fathers
must drag their children along to fill the quota.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The European Union is supporting extremist privatization demands in
the WTO talks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
I hope that these talks fail completely, because the WTO will not
approve anything unless it
does more harm than good.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Opponents of Syria continue being killed in Lebanon, and Robert Fisk is convinced that Syrians are doing it.
Argentina will follow Brazil in paying off its IMF debt early.
This plan is causing controversy in Argentina.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The IMF has a tendency to impose cruel policies on debtor nations. Paying off the debt could be a good thing, if it is followed by tearing up those cruel policies and telling Bush and the IMF to go stuff it. But will that occur?
Various Bush regime policies have had unintended consequences.
Here is a partial list.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The Ethiopean government charged opposition with leaders treason, after they protested against alleged vote-rigging.
I wonder how long it will take Bush to do this.
Activists in Hong Kong are being systematically harrassed.
This reminds me of what Clinton did to a mass protest against a
meeting in Washington: their headquarters was condemned for fire code
violations a couple of days before the protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
It is important to recognize how police stretch and abuse whatever power they are given, so we can judge the likely effects of proposal to give them more power.
How the rationalists of India visit towns to expose the
fraudulent
magic powers of the religious gurus.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The challenges Evo Morales will face if he becomes president of Bolivia.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The police in Peru arrested one of the leaders of last year's massive protests against the US-imposed war on drugs.
Torture degrades us all -- regulating torture makes as much sense as
regulating terrorism, rape or murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Camilo Mej?a spent a year in prison for refusing to serve in the Bush forces in Iraq. Now he teaches high school students to see through military recruiting, which often lies to its targets.
A Bush forces officer has been arrested for embezzling around $100,000.
She should have taken hundreds of millions, like Halliburton; then she'd be safe.
The Israeli army shot 13 UN workers in Jenin, across 4 years. One was British, and a British inquest ruled this an unjustified killing.
Whether that will have any effect is not clear.
The so-called terrorist suspects that Bliar has hounded for years are supposedly planning some sort of crime. But the UK police have never even bothered to question them.
Recently we saw that the Pentagon is spying on protest groups, calling
them "threats".
Bush wants a law to expand this operation, in order
to prevent security threats. Now we don't have to guess what kinds of
threats he means.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The NSA also spies on Americans now.
The Bush regime has many ways of stirring up fear of terrorism. One of them is "agroterrorism", the idea that we need to fear terrorists who would put poison in our food as it is grown.
As this article explains, the US agriculture system does so much of
this that terrorists could hardly make it worse if they tried.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Zimbabwe arrested journalists working for an independent radio broadcaster (which broadcasts from outside Zimbabwe).
Bliar's officials denials that CIA
torture flights stopped in the UK
are meeting mistrust in Parliament.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
This is what happens to habitual liars: people learn to distrust whatever they say.
The top 14 corporate evildoers.
The Blair regime wants to deport a woman who escaped from political
violence in the Congo.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Their position is, being attacked just once for political reasons isn't enough to prove you are the target of political violence. Perhaps they insist that you be attacked fatally before they believe it.
UK citizen al-Habashi says the UK handed him to the US for torture in Morocco. He is now in Guantanamo facing a military kangaroo court.
For Bush, the crucial effect of the Iraqi election is that it will provide a "sovereign" government to approve the transfer of Iraq's wealth into the hands of the corporations he works for.
Bush hopes that he can use air power to keep this corporation and its puppet government in power. But if Iraqis want freedom, they will fight on until their country is free of these Bush-imposed chains.
Schwarzenegger's
denial of clemency to Tookie Williams was indirectly
a way of demonizing other famous prisoners who also maintain or
maintained their innocence, and of covering up the doubts about the
evidence that convicted him.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The courts protect the rights of the wealthy suspect, sometimes too much, but they often trample the rights of the pariah. In recent years, that notably includes Muslims, which is why Muslims can be convicted of planning terrorism based on evidence that rationally only provides grounds to begin to suspect them. But it has included young Black men for decades--especially those who are political, as were some of the men Williams was killed for admiring, even though Williams himself was not.
Thus, convicts innocent of the charges against them are not rare. We can't necessarily tell which ones they are, but we know they are there.
While convicts remain alive in prison, their friends have a strong incentive to look for evidence of their innocence, and official notice must be taken of it. When convicts are shown to be innocent, that embarrasses the authorities. The authorities know they can prevent such embarrassment by killing their mistakes.
The Pentagon, unashamed of exposure of its corruption of Iraqi
journalism,
plans to do even more, world-wide.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
In the US, allowing near-monopoly ISPs to control how their customers
use the Internet
could destroy the Internet as we know it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
A Swiss official found credible evidence of secret CIA prisons and torture flights in Europe--and demands information from European governments.
A former Bush advisor publicly defends torturing suspects.
The artificial case this speaker uses to justify torture belongs to a class of misleading thought experiments which are unrealistic because of the certainties they assume.
Suppose you ask whether it is justified to shoot a suicide bomber without warning. What if your suicide bomber is just an electrician on his way to an appointment? It has happened. Suppose you ask whether to torture a terrorist to find out the plans. What if he is not a terrorist? It has happened. What if he is a terrorist, but he tells you a fake story that will lead you astray? It has happened. The people who want to shoot without warning, who want to torture, propose artificial scenarios constructed to provide unreal justifications. In reality, you don't know the odds well enough to calculate them.
In real life, no matter what evil you're trying to prevent, you can always find a method so evil that stopping you becomes the principal problem.
If the US is going to do torture, who should the torturers be? Here's one idea: invite the public to bid for torture opportunities.
The European Parliament approved a massive surveillance program intended to record who communicates with whom--and the movements, moment by moment, of every mobile phone. There is very little control over how the data can be used.
Cuba has blocked a group of women dissidents, known as the Ladies in White, from going to Europe to receive an award for their support for human rights. They carry out regular protests about the arrest of their relatives who are political prisoners.
The Pentagon is spying on dissident groups, and calls peaceful protests "threats".
Perhaps they're right. Democracy really is a threat--to tyrants.
There was a large conference in London of opposition to the Iraq war, and it plans large protests on the anniversary of the first attack.
The Badr brigades, whose members seem to populate the Iraqi police death squads, admits it is funded by Iran.
It also threatens openly to massacre attack the supporters of political candidates it doesn't like.
However, it is correct in saying that the other political actors in Iraq are equally corrupt--which includes Allawi and the Bush forces. The soldiers of the Bush forces are not getting rich, but their leaders, such as Bush and Cheney, are corrupt in their motives to send them to kill and die.
Can the various movements for peace and justice unite to hold the Bush
regime officials responsible for the many war crimes they have
ordered?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
Four Dalit women were beaten up after they defied the prohibition
on entering a temple in India.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
I cannot regard the worship of this deity, or any other, as a cause worth getting beat up for. But that does not reduce the wrong committed by those who did the beating, nor the injustice of the caste system.
China has arrested the police commander who gave the order to shoot protestors.
Another Lebanese opponent of Syria was assassinated.
The US government gave several stories about what the FAA and NORAD did on Sep 11, 2001, and they add up to reasons to disbelieve them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
the Lancet magazine used scientific statistics to estimate 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. Here's what they did, and how war supporters have tried to discredit or suppress the result.
The US House of representatives voted more than 2 to 1 in favor of McCain's ban on torture. This would be enough to override Bush's veto.
To make this ban effective, it is necessary to make sure that all prisoners held by the US and its agents and subcontractors have the opportunity to go to court if they are tortured.
The European Parliament voted to investigate CIA torture flights.
One architect's confession blew the lid off a failure to effectively enforce Tokyo's building codes for earthquake safety. No one knows how many buildings in Tokyo were improperly built.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-15 because the old link was broken.]
As Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk goes on trial for acknowledging genocide, the real defendent is Turkey.
Iraq after 1000 days of occupation.
During the destruction of Falluja, the al Jazeera camera team was
repeatedly attacked by Bush forces jets, which used their transmitter
to find them.
The CIA does not hesitate to contradict its chief's public statements, when in court protecting itself from investigation into its torture practices.
The US gun companies are
pretending that they will all go out of
business unless Congress gives them immunity.
The
Bush forces operate a "press club" in Iraq, paying reporters to
place stories.
How the CIA paid to set up Judith Miller's stories--and its
tradition of paying journalists goes back to 1950.
The Iraqi parliament election is structured so as to
underrepresent Sunnis.
The Bush forces
found another torture center in Baghdad,
with over 600 malnourished prisoners.
An Iraqi general fled to Jordan and talks about the torture
he has seen under Bush rule.
Was he a general under Saddam Hussein, or also under the Bush forces?
The story seems to suggets the latter, but I'm not certain.
Does someone know?
The French government told the CIA that the Niger uranium
documents were false--a year before Bush cited them as an
excuse for war.
In Mosul, under curfew, with the city cut in half by checkpoints,
the clinics find it hard to open for more than a few hours a day.
The European Commission
cut back a proposed directive
to register industrial chemicals and test their health effects.
A new Ohio law protects future election fraud.
Chavez' supporters
speak of changing Venezuela's constitution so he
can (or will?) remain president for additional years.
I hope they think twice about this. It would be a bad thing to do.
The government of East Timor has suppressed the report of its
own Truth and Reconciliation Commission under pressure from
Indonesia and the US.
Such cowardice can lead to comfort in the short term,
but in the long run it never leads to anything good.
Egypt:
A test of democratic rhetoric versus political Islam.
I propose that the West, rather than fighting against political Islam,
should try to divert it slightly towards more respect for human rights.
Israel's dangerous
nuclear hypocrisy.
The U.S. is threatening to delay the U.N. budget
as a bludgeon for reforms that many countries oppose.
The US air marshalls who shot a man in Miami airport said he made a
bomb threat.
The other passengers say that's not true. The air
marshalls must be taking lessons from cops, whose standard practice
is to lie about the people they have killed.
I'm staying at a place where NPR is on the radio, and I heard this
report first there. Although I had no independent knowledge of the
events, it seemed to me that the news report was too credulous; it
accepted the official story without doubts. That's what the US media
generally do. So I wonder if NPR reported the contrary evidence. I
suspect if NPR did not report this, but I wish I knew for certain.
Police in the US use cell phones to track people's movements, real
time. They can collect records of your past movements without meeting
even the usual standard for a search warrant. Now courts are considering
whether they must meet that standard for real-time tracking.
This is why I do not have a cell phone: I don't want to give the
police a record of everywhere I go. It's not that I have something
specific to hide; rather, it's my duty as a citizen to resist the
total surveillance state.
Legalized prostitution in Germany
allows honest brothels to keep
down pimps and the slave trade (which thrive where prostitution
is illegal).
Greenpeace says that the Montreal conference strengthened
the Kyoto treaty and its future, but showing the US as isolated.
A deal was reached on a fund to invest in
emissions reduction.
Businesses are increasingly recognizing what Bush will not, and
planning to curb CO2 emission.
The Bush regime tried to cancel Clinton's speech at the conference, by
pretending there was a chance it would sign a meaningful treaty if
Clinton did not speak.
Of course, this was a trick--there was never any chance, so Bush's
threat amounted to nothing. He was dangling an absurd false hope.
What shocks me is that Clinton almost fell for the trick.
Despite losing some support, Bush has not abandoned trying to doom the
world to disaster. Merely isolating the Bush regime is not enough.
What the world must do for survival is to slap Bush in the face--day
after day after day.
The unofficial war crimes indictment of Bush, Blair, and others.
In 2002 there was already plenty of reason to be skeptical of the Bush
claims about Iraq. In fact, some of the justifications given for the
first Gulf War were proved false.
The Israeli right wing has used its oppressive occupation of Palestine
as cover to destroy the welfare state, spreading poverty among
Israelis. Peretz, the new Labor Party leader, is running on a
platform of reversing that.
Sharon's campaign consists of killing Palestinian leaders, so as to
provoke terrorist attacks in response, which he can then use to
show how strong he is.
Villagers in Dongzhou, China, protested plans to construct a
coal-fired power plant whose pollution could kill them.
The police
shot and killed dozens of them.
You know Bush is in trouble when even an establishment organ such as
the New York Times criticizes his torture policy.
Afghanistan: 2 Years In Jail For Criticising Islam
The Afghan government should be required to respect human rights,
such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, if it is
to continue to receive western support.
The UK law lords (equivalent of the US Supreme Court) has
ruled out
use of evidence obtained by torture.
Unlike statements by Bush and his henchmen, which really amount to
"We don't admit it is torture". this decision is likely to actually
be obeyed by courts in the UK.
Drug prohibition raises the question of the individual's
cognitive liberty.
I am not sure how far cognitive liberty should extend,
but I am sure the US government restricts it far too much.
Congressman Murtha
continues to attack the war,
and even admits that Iraqis regard the Bush forces
as their enemy.
He doesn't say that the invasion was an evil and criminal act,
but it is still good to see this.
The Bush regime likes to claim that the Bush forces must remain in Iraq
to prevent a disaster whose potential was created by their own invasion.
Like all their justifications for occupying Iraq, it's baloney.
Here's why.
Bush told Republicans that the US Constitution "is just a piece of paper".
A broad range of peaceful protests in the UK have
led to criminal charges under "anti-terror" laws,
confirming that these laws are
really meant to attack
dissidents.
One of Bush's war aims is to give multinational agribusiness
companies
power over Iraqi farmers.
Rice now says that the CIA and US military are forbidden to torture,
but that this is
not a new policy. So it just reaffirms Bush's
long-standing pretense that what they do is not torture.
Shame on those European ministers that accepted this statement
as an excuse to disregard the facts.
Long before Bush, the US government taught other countries' dictators
to torture the opposition.
The Bliar regime
wants to postpone an inquiry into the theft of over a
billion dollars from the Iraqi puppet government, because the results
are likely to implicate Iyad Allawi, the candidate it supports.
In the US:
Donate to NARAL, and send a clever message to the FDA
about
emergency contraception.
James Massey talks about shooting Iraqi civilians,
and the systematic reasons why his unit did this over and over.
Zimbabwe rejected a gift of tents for the million people who were
driven out of their shanties in the city and now have no housing at
all.
The refusal is less puzzling if one considers that these people
supported the opposition party that Mugabe is trying to suppress, and
that he drove them out of the city specifically to attack them.
Naturally he will not let meddling do-gooders undermine the
tribulations he decided to impose on these people.
The Bush forces shamelessly continue their
corruption of Iraqi
journalists despite its exposure.
What this means is that any favorable story about the Bush forces that
comes from Iraq must be assumed to have been written by the Bush
forces. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Will US journalists let Bush fool them again?
Lord Steyn, recently retired from the UK's top courts,
accuses Bush of "war crimes" and "lawlessness on a grand scale".
Anyone who facilitated torture, or prepared the way for it,
is guilty along with the torturers themselves, and this includes
everyone in the UK who supported the acts.
A secret US government memo shows the specific intention to send a
suspect from Guantanamo to another country for torture. Thus, the
attempt to pretend they did not know what they were doing to these
people has been directly refuted.
(Of course, only people who wanted to be fooled were fooled.
But there are plenty of those in the US.)
Some members of the US Congress
called on Bush to start publishing
full casualty figures.
Concealing information about troop losses is a common technique of
dictators throughout history.
A Sunni spokesman says that the Iraqi Resistance will keep fighting
until the Bush forces set a timetable for withdrawal.
I urge people to call them "the Bush forces" so as to help Americans
resist Bush's attempt to manipulate them through their patriotism with
appeals to "support our troops". These are not our troops,
they are Bush's troops.
The Israeli government is putting Mordechai Vanunu on trial
for speaking with foreigners.
This is what Communist countries used to do to their citizens.
Two suicide bombers working together killed 43 Iraqi police
students in the police academy.
The people killed were not civilians--they were collaborating with the
enemy that has conquered their country.
Cindy Sheehan said, "I don't blame the people who killed Casey but the
people who brought us into this, who lied and deceived the world."
The use of secret witnesses in Saddam Hussein's trial means that they
can freely lie if they wish; if they lie, Hussein's defense has no way to
investigate and prove this.
Exxon paid a conservative schemer to draw up a plan to sabotage the
Kyoto treaty.
Remember, the "xx" in "Exxon" is pronounced as a rasping sound in the
back of the mouth, like "ch" in German "ach".
Colonel Westhusing of the Bush forces
committed suicide in Iraq
after he recognized what his mission consisted of.
I would have recommended he desert instead,
but I honor the decision that he made.
The newest desperate right-wing attempt to justify bringing Iraqis to
their knees: to prepare for another war, against Iran.
The Bush regime doesn't care about the
corruption
which diverts the money that is supposed to pay for
"rebuilding Iraq".
Perhaps that's because Bush is not really interested
in rebuilding Iraq--only in pretending to have done so.
The history of torture
as state policy in the US
has continued since before it was the US.
In regard to General Washington's raids on the Seneca indians in 1779,
I suspect that that was because they were fighting on the British side
in the Revolutionary War. By today's standards, destroying the
enemy's homes and farms is a war crime, excused only when practiced
upon Palestinians. In the 1700s, the Seneca would have agreed with
Washington that this was a normal tactic of war. So I won't judge the
raids of long ago as harshly as the torture of helpless prisoners.
Florida adopted a law called the "shoot first" law, which gives anyone
that kills another person (even a bystander) an all-purpose defense:
to say "I felt I was threatened".
This law effectively extends to everyone with a knife or a gun the
immunity currently enjoyed by police when they kill. We can see
how much that is abused by police, and that gives a picture of what
it will do once extended.
There are campaigns to introduce similars laws in other states, too.
The torture policies of the Bush regime are making army officers and
CIA agents start to rebel in disgust. They see that the high
officials who have the principal responsibility for these crimes are
being protected by punishing underlings.
Terrorism in Spain: harmless bombs, preceded by warnings, snarl
traffic.
These warning shots will be cited as a justification for attacking
Europeans' freedom privacy, but the cure is far worse than the
disease. Terrorism is minor as a cause of death in Europe, as in the
US; it is dwarfed by murder, not to mention car accidents. Any
proposal to reduce terrorism at great cost to people's rights is
therefore unjustified.
Descriptions of Saddam Hussein's
torture practices are heart-rending.
There is some doubt whether the witnesses could really remember such
detail of what they saw at the ages of 10 and 15; at the same time,
I would not put any of this past him.
Once we convict and imprison those in charge of torturing,
disappearing and killing of prisoners, Bush and Saddam could be
cellmates.
New York City is
building tide-driven electric generators.
However, even when fully extended, it will be small compared with
the city's electricity needs. Conservation can do far more.
Various US states are trying to impose their own limits
on automobile emissions, to reduce global warming.
The Bush regime has
systematically sabotaged environmental
protection in the US using a wide range of tactics.
Some of these tactics are part of the War on Integrity,
which is the overall Bush approach to governance.
1/4 million protestors marched for democracy in Hong Kong.
Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize lecture.
Professor Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist in the US who was charged
with terrorism, was acquitted on the serious charges. The jury was
deadlocked on some minor charges, and he may have to face another
trial on them.
Al-Arian is one of the political leaders who were hit with a campaign
of fabricated accusations. I probably don't agree fully with their
views, but the idea of America is that they must be free to agitate
for them.
Khaled al Masri is suing the US government for kidnaping and torturing
him. They did it because his name seemed suspicious.
Condoleezza Rice said pretty-sounding words about torture. Here are
facts that contradict them.
An Iraqi doctor describes how the Bush forces have attacked and
destroyed hospitals, arrested surgeons during operations, and
shot at medics trying to pick up wounded.
The article also reports also shot civilians in cold blood as they
tried to leave Falluja following the procedures that had been
announced.
The Bush forces would surely deny most of this, but they have lied so
much that they have no credibility any more.
The tax and banking policies of rich countries encourage the rich
aristocrats of poor countries to move their money into the rich
countrie's banks. This hurts the poor countries.
Life in Iraq is a matter of constant fear of violence.
(This article accepts some questionable Bush assumptions about Al
Qa'ida and Zarqawi, and who is responsible for bombings. I doubt
those assumptions.)
The Islamic regime in Iraq has segregated schools by sex.
Bush may not have had this in mind when he launched his invasion,
but his invasion is responsible for it.
CIA's secret prisoners were shifted to prisons outside Europe, just in
time for Condoleezza Rice's visit there.
As Condoleezza Rice is pressed about torture flights, she follows
standard Bush tactics: keep up the lie no matter how tattered it gets.
This emperor continues to insist that he is fully clothed, no matter
how many people say he is naked. He figures that he can intimidate
enough people, with the help of compliant media and corrupt elections,
that he will never be called to account for anything as long as he
does not admit it.
The Bush forces doctors actively prepare prisoners for torture by examining them to find their weaknesses.
An Iraqi writer has been imprisoned for two years without charges by
the Bush forces. Others in the same prison describe how they were
tortured.
Hormone-mimicking chemicals in the environment--the same ones that
are killing off most of the world's frog species--have dangerous effects
in humans at low levels, too.
People who play violent video games become desensitized to violence,
and this can be measured by their brain waves.
There was a time when a copy of Doom was installed on a computer at
MIT. Many of the students in the group that my office was in played
the game, and needing a distraction, I played it too. But I
discovered that I did not want to play it the same way they did. I
treated the game as a challenge, and worked out how to pass each level
with full health and ammunition without cheating. They seemed to
simply like moving around shooting, using the cheat command as
necessary. The gory corpses of enemies disgusted me, so I tuned them
out in my mind, but the students seemed to revel in the gore of these
imaginary deaths. Eventually I concluded that playing the game was
having a deleterious effect on my mind, and stopped.
Ever since then I have found myself uncomfortable with video games
that seem to revel in imaginary death. I do not favor censorship of
video games, any more than I do censorship of movies. But I would not
have those video games or movies in my home--whether or not there were
children in it. Children should see lovemaking, not violence.
Not content with rigging voting machines, the Republicans of Ohio have
passed a law prohibiting challenges to federal elections, and
systematically disenfranchising many poor people.
Senator Burns, from Montana, appears to have switched his vote to
preserve a loophole for sweatshop operators in the Marianas Islands,
after one of them paid his campaign funds.
Selling votes this way is so frequent that you might thing it isn't
news. But I think we have a duty to condemn legislators that are for
sale, no matter how commonplace that becomes.
A dangerous directive for mandatory "data retention"--that is,
recording info about communications among members of the public--is
being pushed through the European Parliament.
The excuse-of-the-week is "fighting terrorism", but terrorism in
Europe is a small problem: the many existing countermeasures are quite
effective. It is wrong to make society pay a high price--any kind of
high price--just to make a small problem smaller.
The government of France is considering amending a proposed law so
that it would prohibit much, or potentially all, free software.
(The vague wording leaves the scope unclear.)
The prohibition of free software is an amendment to a larger bill that
is unjust without it. Every one of the provisions described
here is unjust--a sign that the government works for the media companies
against the public.
An FCC statement appears to claim veto power over what software you
run, based on the "needs of law enforcement".
The Royal Society in the UK is pursuing its own financial interests as
a science publisher by opposing open access to scientific papers. Now
42 Fellows of the Royal Society have signed an open letter criticizing
this policy.
Islamic militants are attacking the courts in Bangladesh.
Babies get used to the taste of the foods their mothers eat
during pregnancy.
I wonder if this has an effect on the lives of people
who are adopted as newborns.
Americans Welcome Iraqi Troops.
Oil company executives lied to Congress when they said they
had not had meetings with Cheney,
shows a leaked document.
That lying was a crime, but the Bush regime is unlikely to
prosecute its cronies.
Bush plans to replace ground troops with aerial bombing in Iraq
are already under way: there is a substantial air war, being kept
nearly secret.
Egyptian police
barred opposition supporters from the voting
booth, and shot at them. This opposition is Islamist, though not as
extreme as the ones in Iran.
By supporting secular dictators in the Muslim world for decades
(including Saddam Hussein for over a decade), the US has discredited
secularism there. This has created a situation where the only
opposition to dictators comes from Islamic extremists, who often have
majority support, but themselves don't respect human rights.
It is a bad situation, but keeping the dictators in power against the
will of the people does not make it better.
The Burmese military rulers
use brutal torture on political prisoners.
I hope to see the day when the US can set a positive example that
would put pressure on such cruel regimes--but I don't expect it in my
lifetime.
Parodies of Harry Potter books have been suppressed in many countries
with copyright lawsuits.
This is one more reason not to buy Harry Potter books. Meanwhile,
it appears that JK Rowling is not content with her riches, but remains
greedy for every last possible additional penny.
One reader said that the above article gave him the impression that
the Tania Grotter books were simply copies of Harry Potter books, with
a few names changed. If so, the article was misleading. The person
who told me about the Tania Grotter books says they are quite
different from the Harry Potter books. They started as parody, which
can be seen in the article, and then went off in an independent
direction involving Russian folklore.
Here a law professor argues that it is wrong to permit
these take-offs of Harry Potter.
Democrats' opposition to Bush is only partial.
Here's what the real opposition to Bush
plans to do next.
The EU wants to establish a pan-European database about everyone in
Europe, which is
a big step towards total surveillance.
The UN may expand the intervention in Darfur to protect the refugees
who are being killed by Islamic militias.
Would nuclear weapons in Iran's hands be a danger to the world?
Compare Iran with the US.
Islamic militants are
attacking the courts in Bangladesh.
Babies get used to the taste of the
foods their mothers eat
during pregnancy.
I wonder if this has an effect on the lives of people
who are adopted as newborns.
The main Sunni political party in Iraq has
called for the release of
the Christian Peacemaker Team hostages.
If the kidnapers are part of the Iraqi Resistance, we can expect them
to heed this call. So if they don't heed the call, it suggests they
are not part of the Iraqi Resistance.
The Iraqis in a mosque drove Iyad Allawi away by throwing their
shoes at him, and his guards started shooting in the air.
Allawi says someone tried to shoot him, but it seems dubious.
The man Bush wants elected to run Iraq does not seem
to be very popular outside the White House.
Iraq has had Sunnis and Shi'ites for centuries, but it is the Bush
intervention that is polarizing the country between them.
Bush forces officers have given the lie to Bush claims
that the Iraqi resistance is made up of foreigners.
The foreigners fighting in Iraq are mainly in the Bush forces,
and the sooner they are all removed, the less the cruelty of
the occupation will be.
CIA torturers have leaked information about their torture techniques.
Israeli torture has been opposed through the legal system,
but with only partial success.
Who's killing Iraqi intellectuals?.
Law school research shows that it has become commonplace for
businesses to make exaggerated and questionable copyright and
trademark claims that shut down free speech.
The spanish right-wing is trying to rehabilitate Franco, who took
power at the head of an army rebellion against the elected government,
and executed on the order of a million people after he had seized
power.
A Spanish court is investigating CIA use of a Spanish airport
for activities that would make Franco proud.
An unofficial delegation from the US, representing cities, states,
anglers, and even businesses, is pushing against the Bush regime
in climate control talks.
The Microsoft XBox is a test platform for schemes to lock up future
generations of PCs, so that they can only install software that gets authorized by Microsoft.
This is one example of what we call "treacherous computing".
The practice of injecting cows with an artificial hormone, which increases production of milk, also produces a hormone that might increase the risk of breast cancer. The FDA declines to study whether this is dangerous or not.
Palestinian activists in the US have faced systematic persecution,
being arrested on false charges, getting unfair trials, and being
attacked by police both in and out of prison.
Evidence of another case of Bush forces mercenaries shooting Iraqi
civilians for fun.
Given the unlikeliness of finding evidence of any particular case,
these cases for which evidence appears are a small sample of a
widespread practice.
The Bush forces are promoting Iyad Allawi for the Iraqi elections.
After a first career as a bully for Saddam Hussein, he went on to
organize terroristm for the CIA.
The BBC is broadcasting "news reports" from "journalists"
that actually work for the military.
Gay marriage is
now legal in South Africa.
Sony's egregious rootkit DRM system is now the target of lawsuits, but
even better, it is
reopening the issue of whether DRM is legitimate.
Ironically, Sony's rootkit DRM is much easier to bypass than other
kinds of DRM. It suffices to run GNU/Linux, for instance, and it
cannot affect you at all. If Sony switches to a DRM system like
that used in DVDs, it would be a much bigger threat to our freedom.
The small number of internet providers in the US
creates new threats
to the freedom to use the Internet.
Four Venezuelan opposition parties with hardly any voter support
(according to opinion polls) have decided to boycott the
election--they say that it won't be fair.
Boycotting the election must feel better than not getting any votes.
But it's meant to provide Bush with an excuse to attack Venezuela.
This letter warns the US media not to be taken in.
Will the US media heed this warning? We will see.
Bush forces autopsy reports show that 44 prisoners were killed.
The US newspapers have not bothered to mention the story.
I guess that they don't consider it news that the Bush regime would
murder people in custody.
How Bush plans to disguise the theft of Iraq's oil reserves.
The EU is considering new anti-freedom measures,
based irrationally on the fact that a Belgian woman
did a suicide bombing in Iraq.
The unstated premise is that even a minuscule risk of terrorism is a
reason to give up any amount of freedom in the name of preventing it.
Even if we suppose that this really would prevent that minuscule risk,
which is dubious, it seems like a bad deal to me. Terrorist bombings
in Europe happen, but they are rare enough that sacrificing anything
important to reduce them is a mistake.
The reflections of Jim Loney, one of the Christian Peacemaker Team
that was
taken hostage in Iraq by a group that claims to be part
of the resistance.
If they were really in the resistance, I think they would let
these people go.
The congressional Democratic Party is starting a debate its position
on Iraq, which
could lead to real opposition to continued oppression
of that country.
I now see a possibility that the US will take its army away from the
Bush forces. But this gives me only limited enthusiasm because it is
unlikely to reverse the last four years' losses for civil liberties.
America the land of freedom continues to die, and I see no prospect of
bringing it back to life.
Sharon admits that the wall is meant for annexation.
Bliar faces accusations of complicity in torture for allowing the CIA
to ferry prisoners to the dungeon through the UK.
The director of al Jazeera asks: why did you want to bomb me, Mr Bush
and Mr Blair?
Global warming could put northern Europe in a deep freeze.
The ocean currents have already slowed substantially--a few
decades could bring disaster.
Police in Brixton (a part of London) have started
arresting people for
possession of marijuana.
Supposedly this is because pot sellers on the street are annoy
passers-by. If so, why not just arrest the people who do that?
The "best" brigade in the Iraqi Army is already preparing to butcher
Sunnis.
Its officers have no respect for the human rights, political
opposition, or lives of Sunnis.
This is what Bush wants to put in control of Iraq's streets; this is
the "freedom and democracy" that Bush has given to Iraq. Is it an
improvement on Saddam Hussein? Not that I can see.
The only way to prevent their plan for mass murder of Sunnis is if the
resistance fighters manage kick these troops out of Sunni areas before
they can carry it out.
The RIAA plans to sue people
who tell their friends about songs,
according to the Onion.
This is satire, but reality of the RIAA is just as wrong.
Venezuela's
New Popular Movements Grow From Above and From Below
How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq.
A Shi'ite theocracy is one possibility in the long run, but it is
still possible that Bush's cronies will get away with stealing Iraq's
oil reserves. Both may happen together.
Most Arabs think of the US as a threat, and consider the Bush invasion
of Iraq as
harmful to peace and democracy in their region.
Political leaders of all parts of Iraq, including the president of the
Iraqi government, met in a conference where they proposed peace talks
with the resistance. The Bush regime does not seem to like this.
Despite Europe's conservation efforts,
it has much further to go
before it can reach a sustainable way of life.
A California gang-member, who while on death row developed a system
for ending gang warfare and keeping kids out of gangs, faces execution
this month unless he gets clemency. A strong international campaign
is supporting him.
Even when people have not done such exemplary good in prison, that
does not justify killing prisoners. The death penalty should
be abolished.
An anticapitalist take on the Iraq war and why US politicians are
now turning against it.
I think it is a mistake to identify a capitalist economic system
(freedom of business activity within regulation) with domination of
politics by a class of the very rich. Today we have both, but either
one can exist without the other.
I don't know how to eliminate the domination part, but I see no reason
to think that it requires eliminating freedom of business activity.
Certain well-chosen regulations, such as those which formerly served
the US well across several decades, ought to do the job.
The Bush regime paid a lot of money for its fake-journalism operating
in Iraq--much more than was needed for the actions we know of. What
else did that money buy? Perhaps Iraqi newspapers? And something
else in the US?
Conservatives in the US see nothing wrong with
corrupting the press.
They reflect the Bush regime's usual attitude: when their lies are
exposed and the consequences hurt, they blame whoever exposed the
lies.
The Iraqi puppet government's rationing is
giving Iraqis less rations
than Hussein's government did while sanctions were in effect.
The Bush regime is negotiating with Iran about what to do in Iraq.
What does this mean?
There are those who say that the Iraqi death squads
are working for Iran. Maybe the Bush regime and Iran
have consciously working together to organize them.
When US politicians talk about "withdrawal" from Iraq,
do they mean
real withdrawal or fake withdrawal?
Even as the Iraqi "national" government plans to sell off Iraq's oil
reserves to foreign companies on the cheap, the Kurds are doing their
own drilling.
Does this presage the division of Iraq?
Allowing Iraq to divide might be the best thing to do, given that it
was an artificial combination in the first place, and the amount of
inter-group hostility there is. But I hope the Kurds won't sell off
the oil reserves to foreign companies.
The presidential elections in Bolivia, previously postponed,
are now
proceeding. A right-wing pro-empire candidate could be chosen by
congress, even though he is likely not to get the most votes.
The Bush forces have paid (i.e., corrupted) many Iraqi journalists
into serving as their propaganda tools by publishing "news stories"
that were written for them and supplied by the Bush forces.
The Iraqi government failed to release the promised report of its
investigation into torture of prisoners. This fuels the suspicion
that it has
no intention of really investigating.
Bush got an exception for the treaty that protects the ozone layer,
for the sake of strawberry farms. So you can pay less for strawberries,
and get skin cancer.
The US Senate
voted against investigating whether torture was used at
Abu Ghraib and other US-run prisons overseas. Their eyes are firmly
closed.
I'm very worried about this
plan to make electricity customers to use
power meters that can be monitored remotely.
Will this system enable the electric company to monitor energy use
moment by moment (or even hour by hour)? That would mean that their
records would show when you were home and when you were out. That
would be an invasion of privacy. I don't mind paying for the
electricity I use, but the electric company has no need and no right
to know precisely when I use it.
Several Sunni political and religious leaders have been assassinated
recently. One was assassinated in Falluja, where it would be hard
for Shi'ites to go,
where it is hard for anyone to move around without
Bush forces permission. I think we can be confident the Bush forces
approved this assassination.
Bush forces soldiers danced with glee over the bodies of Iraqi
civilians they had killed.
No wonder they kept reporters out
for so long.
The Bush forces are
making a practice of raiding hospitals,
arresting doctors, and attacking ambulances. They believe
that their enemies should not receive medical care.
Bush forces soldiers sent a robot bomb to kill an Iraqi man
trapped in
a damaged car that could no longer move. And they made a movie of it.
I wonder if that bomb was labeled "freedom and democracy".
Rumsfeld says that Americans in the Bush forces should not intervene
when they find their
Iraqi puppets torturing prisoners, because Iraq
is "sovereign".
If the Iraqi government is so sovereign that it has the right to
torture without interference from Bush, does it also have the right to
refuse to privatize Iraq's oil?
The Bob Woodward scandal is
not going away. While concealing his
knowledge that high officials were involved in outing Plame, he
told the public this was not the case.
The primary witness testifying about implicating Syria in the
assassination of Hariri recanted his testimony--in Syria.
It is entirely plausible that Bush's friends tried to bribe or
threatened him; it is entirely plausible that the Assad regime
threatened him. I can also imagine that he testified so that he could
get Assad to pay him to recant later. I don't know which version of
his story to trust--probably neither one.
Mehlis ought to finish investigate the van that was used for the
bombing, rather than rely on this witness.
Why does Howard (prime minister of Australia) want sedition laws now?
Here's
one theory.
Cunningham's campaign finance corruption
seems to bring in many other
Republicans.
Lawrence Wilkerson says that Cheney was the main advocate of torture
and disregard for the Geneva Conventions--apparently a war crime.
However, Bush's war crimes
go beyond the methods used in the war.
Applying the same principles that were applied in Nuremberg to the
Nazi leaders, the decision to launch a war of aggression was the
central crime.
Some have criticized Nuremberg as "victors' justice".
I think the principles of the Nuremberg trials are admirable.
Whether they are really "victors' justice" will be determined
by whether the US applies the same principles to its own leaders.
Palestinians appealed to the kidnapers of some western aid workers
to release them.
If the kidnapers are working for Bush, I doubt they will heed this call.
If they are really in the Iraqi resistance, they might--but why would
they have kidnaped these aid workers at all?
Poor coutries are asking rich countries to pay them to preserve their
rainforests--which would counterbalance the incentive to cut them
down, while providing the funds to control illegal logging.
Superstitions can be deadly: a thousand old women each year are being
killed as witches in Tanzania.
Human rights volunteers, who went to Iraq to help prisoners imprisoned
and tortured by the Bush forces,
have been kidnaped. I wonder who
might have done it?
Israel refuses to halt "illegal" settlement building. (These
"illegal" settlements have had general government support.)
An American student was convicted of plotting terrorism,
based only on a confession obtained through torture.
The
reports of Saudi and US government agents prove that his
interrogation was a joint project. The US government was thus a
direct participant in how he was treated.
Congressional candidate Tony Trupiano makes "
Impeach Bush" a part
of his campaign.
The US government has supported Islamic extremist terror groups--parts
of that loose affiliation we call Al Qa'ida--around the world for over
two decades, including people who attacked US installations. And this
support continued after Sep 11, 2001.
Former and present officials of the Iraqi government
say that torture and rape of prisoners is common practice.
With examples like Bush and Saddam Hussein to follow,
this is only natural.
These outposts get secret government support in despite of
being "illegal".
Here's
the actual report.
A story about a settlement that Israel is extending.
Congress voted to cut aid to certain countries in Latin
America unless they give US soldiers immunity from war crimes prosecution.
(This article was written before the amendment was adopted.)
These countries should start canceling other treaties with the US, and
if they host US soldiers, they should make those soldiers leave.
Bush plans to withdraw ground troops from Iraq, and replace them with
air power. That would mean fewer Iraqi civilians shot on the street,
and more killed by bombs.
A courageous UK editor--and member of Parliament--says he will
publish the "bomb al Jazeera" memo if he gets a copy,
even at the cost of going to jail.
Various European countries are identifying suspect CIA torture flights
in order to
investigate the torture activities.
Ten forms of injustice
in the trial of Saddam Hussein.
The crime Saddam is being tried for is that he signed death warrants.
Bush has done lots of that. Could we put Bush on trial for this?
Bush should follow the example of Congressman Cunningham: resign
and come clean.
Here are the details of how prosecutor Detlev Mehlis
delivered a false report on a bombing in Berlin, inculpating
Libyans while protecting suspects associated with Western spy agencies.
More information on the various suspects--those protected
and those possibly framed.
The parents of a Danish soldier killed in the Bush forces
are suing their government,
claiming the war is illegal
and violates the Danish constitution.
Will Bush stage a terrorist attack on Congress?
It would serve his
purposes, and it is no worse than what he's already done.
The Bush regime plans to allow the Pentagon to
spy on US civilians.
The Bush forces have extended into Ramadi their systematic pattern of
atrocities against Iraqi civilians.
When that article speaks of Iran,
see this article.
Amnesty International held a protest in London
against the UK's tolerance for torture.
(I wish I had known about this earlier so I could
post it in advance.)
The Bush regime has announced a plan for Iraqization of the war:
removing American troops, while paying Iraqis to do most of the
fighting to keep their country subjugated.
Because Democrats in Congress failed to be skeptical about Bush lies
about Iraq in 2003, it is hard for them to criticize Bush now.
Sea levels are rising faster in the last decade,
and global warming seems to be the cause.
Sharon's new party
completely rejects the idea of "land for peace".
Instead it offers Palestinians "independence" (in tiny pieces of
territory) if they crush all militant resistance to the occupation.
Since the occupation's cruelty generates militant resistance, Sharon
himself can ensure this criterion is not met. Thus, it is an excuse
for refusing to end the cruelty.
Although the policy Sharon has stated is a bad one, I suspect it is a
good thing that he has come out in the open with it.
Deborah Davis is in court because, while on a bus commuting to
work,
she rejected a demand to show her papers for no reason.
As the Bush forces' situation in Iraq continues deteriorating,
the war hawks are starting to disagree over
what to do now.
The city of
Falluja has been turned into a prison
for the few of its inhabitants that are still there.
If you have money, that is considered evidence of being a "terrorist",
which means the Bush forces can steal it.
'Trophy'
video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi
drivers.
Documented examples of brutality like this one are the exceptions.
The usual case is brutality that can never be proved.
Soldiers in prison in the US are treated in ways that come close
to torture. They get no blankets and no heat.
The Bush forces are still planning to remain in Iraq
for many years.
Bush is bullying the UN, saying "serve us or we'll make you irrelevant."
If the UN surrenders to this bullying, it will be irrelevant.
Families of British soldiers killed in Iraq have
gone to court in the
UK calling the war "illegal" and demanding an independent
investigation of how the UK joined the Bush forces.
Here is their web site.
General Odom, who exemplifies the "rational imperialism" faction
of US conservatives, says that the Bush forces should be withdrawn
from Iraq because they can't do anything there but harm.
The Bush forces are using house demolition as a punishment.
I think that collective punishment of civilians violates
one of the Geneva conventions.
A foreign observer who escorts Palestinian children to school in Hebron
was specifically expelled by the Israeli government.
It is standard practice for settlers to harass Palestinians, and
standard practice for the Israeli police to wink at this--it amounts
to an unadmitted policy of ethnic cleansing. The expulsion of
foreigners who get in the way confirms that the government supports
the policy.
Israel continues
demolishing Palestinian homes, too.
People in the Ukraine had high hopes for their peaceful "Orange
Revolution", but the new government has failed to prosecute corrupt
former rulers or reduce corruption. Its only real effect was to give
the Ukraine's support to the US.
Since US funds helped organize the revolution, one must suspect that
that was the aim all along.
Today's carbon dioxide levels are
the highest in 650,000 years.
Detlev Mehlis, who is investigating the assassination of Hariri in
Lebanon, has a past history of investigating acts of terror and
getting the answers that the US wanted. He fits into a long
and deeply orchestrated campaign to impose the New World Order
on Lebanon and Syria.
Dictators are fond of organizing "spontaneous demonstrations". But
the US has perfected the technique; the fact that the organizers are
paid shows through occasionally, but they fool lots of people. In
particular, they always fool the US mass media, which want to be
fooled.
"For some time, I have been suggesting that the aim of Republican
strategy has been a Republican Party that
permanently runs the United
States and a United States that permanently runs the world."
UK police will use a computer game as a sobriety test.
This will offer an opportunity to demand that companies switch from
mandatory drug tests to mandatory sobriety tests. Sobriety tests
would be far more effective for preventing accidents, since they can
be done every day, and can detect dangerous impairment regardless of
its cause, while preserving the employees privacy. (This method is or
was used by a bus company in California.)
Bush forces troops are terrorizing and massacring civilians in Haditha.
And the "Iraqi army" is shooting unarmed civilians in their beds.
Assassins are focusing on professors and doctors.
How the BBC helped cover up, then minimize, the war crimes of Falluja.
If Bush indeed wanted to bomb the headquarters of al Jazeera, it
would have been the finale to a persistent campaign of military
attacks against that TV station.
Blair says nuclear power is the only way to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.
However,
a technology forecast suggests that by 2030 solar energy will
be cheaper than other energy sources are now. If this is true, it is
absurd to build atomic plants, since they won't be available until
almost that date.
Journalists' rights groups
asking for clarification of a report that
suggests Bush sought to bomb Aljazeera.
Protestors outside the Bush ranch are being arrested,
just for being there.
Proposed Australian sedition laws
would criminalize the views of
academics and journalists. This supposedly will protect Australians
from "terrorists".
Laws making it a crime to be unable to prove you don't know the answer
to a question are an absurd excuse to imprison whoever the government
wishes. It is part of the same trend that can be seen in the UK:
defining crimes which are situations rather than actions.
The cultural monuments of Iraq are being
destroyed along with
its citizens.
What's
the origin of the cruelty of the occupation of Iraq?
You can see it in the people who enjoy the idea of Bush forces
troops robbing Iraqi civilians.
Stealing alcohol is a small matter compared robbing the oil reserves,
with mass murder and torture, with destroying the nation's
infrastructure and its history. But it shows the disrespect from
which all those wrongs can come.
Meanwhile, wasn't it stupid to attack the kind of not-very-devout
Muslims who would drink alcohol? Which kind of people would you rather
encourage Iraqis to be?
Which country will be the next victim of US foreign policy?
The International Federation of Journalists has
demanded clarification
from Bush and Bliar about actual and threatened attacks on al Jazeera
television.
The Bush regime has
pressed charges against Jose Padilla, who will now
get the day in court that he was always entitled to.
The charges have nothing to do with planning a terrorist attack in the
US, which is what he was originally accused of. We can take this as
confirmation that he was falsely imprisoned for those accusations.
Meanwhile, there is a danger he will not get a fair trial in today's
climate.
Hunger claims 6M children per year, and more children are hungry in
Africa now than in the 90s. In other words,
current policies are
making things worse.
Russia plans to restrict charities, including human rights groups, and
prohibit them from receiving foreign funding. This will effectively
prevent Amnesty International from operating there.
The threat of US-funded subversive groups that organize "spontaneous
protests" is a real one. The governments they have protested
against--in Ukraine and Georgia, for instance--have usually have been
nondemocratic. But it is not clear that the replacements really
are better (except better for Bush).
Blair effectively confirmed the story that Bush wanted to bomb the
headquarters of al Jazeera, by issuing a gag order forbidding British
media from publishing any more information about the leaked memo.
Whoever knows more should tell the details to al Jazeera, so it can
publish them.
Vandana Shiva: Two myths that keep the world poor.
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil independence movement did not allow people in
the areas it controls to vote for the new president. This helps the
hard-line candidate who wants to reopen war against the Tamils.
Sinhalese tried to force Tamils to assimilate, forbidding the use of
the Tamil language, starting in the 1950s. After decades of futile
protests, the Tamils started an armed uprising. However, now that
movement seems to be caught up in trickery, like the Sinhala majority.
Faux News refuses to run an ad criticizing Supreme Court nominee
Alito. It says there is a factual error in the ad, but that seems to
be untrue.
The Bushmen were caught again exaggerating dubious "intelligence"
about Saddam's weapons programs. They were warned "Curveball" could
not be trusted, but he said what they wanted to hear, so they
presented his reports as truth.
Was Zarqawi killed in Mosul?
Or was he killed long ago?
More cases of torture by the Iraqi puppet government.
This government is the child of the Bush regime;
like father, like son.
George Monbiot sums up the war crimes of Falluja.
28% of the wood imported into the UK was illegally logged
from forests that are in danger of being wiped out.
The Blair regime has turned its back on the idea of mandatory
greenhouse gas limits, effectively betraying the environmental
movement and giving full support to Bush.
Genetic engineering of a pest-resistant variety of peas
has failed. They resist pests, but they cause allergic reactions
in mice (and thus perhaps in humans too).
Karl Rove is worried about needing a new job if he is indicted,
so he has prepared a resume.
A leaked secret document says Bush and Blair considered bombing the
headquarters of Al Jazeera television. (This is located in Qatar, a
country with which neither the US nor the UK is at war.) Was it a
joke, or serious? The people who tried to leak it are facing
prosecution.
The Iraqi puppet government has unveiled its plans to privatize Iraq's
oil reserves, confirming
what everyone with eyes open could see about
the reason for "Operation Iraqi Liberation".
The usual feeble neoliberal excuses for privatization were offered,
such as "we don't have enough money without outside investment".
Why don't they have enough? Because they are corrupt, and squandered
more than a billion dollars on corruption.
[Can you find the note about that, it was a few months ago, and
link to it here?]
There will be a referendum next year in Nevada to
legalize small
quantities of marijuana, as well as regulated growing and sale.
The Bush forces call white phosphorus a "chemical weapons"
when accusing Saddam Hussein of using it.
After a mine killed some Bush forces soldiers, the others retaliated
by
shooting some civilians in the neighborhood.
Such reprisals were the Nazi policy when the resistance in occupied
Europe killed German soldiers.
Signs on Bush forces convoys tell Iraqis to stay 100 meters away or be
shot.
And here's
what happens when Iraqi civilians don't see the sign from
100 meters away. Or whenever a Bush forces soldier sees a car and
panics for no reason.
Of course, the Bush forces say they "the car failed to stop".
But whose fault was that?
A Bush forces soldier who cleaned up war debris for 6 months in 2003
now has cancer and many other medical problems. And his daughter was
born without a right hand. Since he has a high level of
Dirty Uranium
in his blood, he thinks that is the cause.
The CIA uses a torture technique that goes
back to the Inquisition.
Of course, the CIA won't admit it is torture.
We need an independent prosecutor to investigate high officials
who may be guilty of authorizing torture.
The US Senate voted to allow Bush to keep "terrorist" suspects in
prison without trial. (If Bush chooses to try them in military
courts, then they get to appeal; but if he does not try them, they
have no hope except to starve themselves to death.)
This is a shameful day for the United States, so-called "land of the
free".
The bill also includes McCain's anti-torture amendment, but if
prisoners cannot go to court when they are tortured, their jailers can
get away with torture even if it is illegal.
Here's
clear evidence of the Bushmen's willingness to stretch the
truth to link Saddam Hussain with Osama bin Laden.
Blair is falling under great pressure for use of cluster bombs.
The unexploded bomblets can often kill children who pick them up.
The US accuses Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales of getting
funds from Cuba and Venezuela, but the supposed opposition in his
program is rather tepid. There's no way to make Bolivia independent
without facing sanctions from the US; a leader who doesn't dare to do
so is too weak.
I don't know whether Cuba, or Venezuela, is funding Morales (though
since Cuba is so poor, I doubt it could). If they are doing so, is
that wrong? The US funds lots of political campaigns in other
countries, including probably Bolivia. So this is simply turnabout.
The US Bush forces were forced to
admit using white phosphorus as a
weapon, after previously denying it.
The argument seems convincing that white phosphorus is not a chemical
weapon. It falls a small way on the other side of the line. This
distinction would be relevant in a war crime tribunal against Bush,
though not for Blair, since the UK has ratified additional treaties.
But the crucial thing is to bring Bush before a war crimes tribunal
and investigate what he and his henchmen have done. Once this is
achieved, there will be no shortage of charges to bring.
Here's how the police
attacked Nasser Shneiter village.
The remaining men are in hiding, since they would be arrested
and maybe killed if they are found, while the crops die because
police destroyed the irrigation equipment.
Baghdad has become the city of the gunmen, as militias control parts
of the city while Bush-created paramilitary death squads terrorize it.
The Bush forces established these death squads, which means that
Christian extremist terrorists are in the same league with Islamic
extremist terrorists.
Why did the Bush forces
raid some of their own paramilitaries?
What does this all mean?
An Italian who works in Gaza on an Italian-government-sponsored aid
project was interrogated at length and threatened, then sent back to
Italy. Reasons were not given. It's not the first time this sort
of thing has happened.
A long series of falsehoods about supposed Iraqi weapons and supposed
connections with Al Qa'ida adds up to a
clear intent to deceive the
public and the world.
Thus, as proof surfaces that some of these falsehoods were intentional
lies, it is no surprise. We did not have clear proof before, but we
had enough reason to disbelieve what we were told.
I disagree with that article on one point of interpretation. The
attack on Pearl Harbor was a real surprise attack, because it was
intended by the Japanese Navy as such. A surprise attack doesn't
cease to be a surprise attack just because finds out about it.
Roosevelt's conduct raises other issues, but he did not accuse the
Japanese of anything they had not really done.
Israel keeps expanding the settlements.
And ethnic cleansing proceeds in Hebron, as Palestinians are driven
out.
When a Palestinian kills a Jew, the settlers punish other
Palestinians. When a Jew kills a Palestinian, or many Palestinians,
the army punishes other Palestinians. It's the same way Jews were
treated for centuries in Europe.
Lots of Congressmen are now demanding an investigation into how
the administration ignored the reports of the Able Danger group.
As usual, the Bushmen are blocking the investigation and claiming
it's for "national security".
If we had an independent press, it would be all over the
administration for this, and they would have to allow the
investigation.
I wonder how Able Danger relates to Total Information Awareness.
Buildings in New Orleans that were flooded
are now full of mold spores
that can trigger allergic reactions.
The European Union agreed to take the lead in ending the trade in
diamonds mined by plundering armies in Africa. Civil wars there are
often fueled by this diamond trade. But it won't be easy.
Palestinians trying to harvest their olives face
sudden attacks from
settlers, and harrassment by the army. Sometimes they find the trees
uprooted. But even if none of those things gets in the way, they
often find no olives, because they have been blocked from taking care
of the trees.
The EU has been trying to control greenhouse gas emissions,
but overall they are rising instead of falling.
Ahmad Chalabi, who helped provide Bush with phony "intelligence" that
was useful for lies to justify the war, is now going to be rewarded
by becoming prime minister of Iraq.
The Bush forces themselves occasionally admit that few of the
Iraqi resistance fighters really are foreigners.
I would not trust the rest of what the Bush forces spokesmen say in
this article--things that serve their interests and that they could
lie about without risk. I'll believe they arrested no foreigners in
Tall Afar, because if they had found some, they would be showing them
with glee. But when they say the 1000 people they arrested are
"insurgents", it probably means they arrested 1000 people and labeled
them "insurgents". And I am skeptical that their attack "restored order"
unless it is the peace of the grave.
British-trained Iraqi police killed prisoners by drilling into their
heads. The UK government asked the Iraqi police to investigate this,
but they won't. This has become a scandal in the UK.
The Bush forces have
raided Iraqi torture houses before;
but it was necessary to tell them "insurgents are there"
before they would bother.
"It wasn't torture, because we didn't behead them", says the Iraqi
government.
Taking lessons from Bush again?
When Bush and Blair say that the reason they took away your freedom is
to protect you, remember this.
Protests in Ecuador against the plans for a low-wage
trade treaty with the US
have met with police repression.
Here's what Sony cameras would do,
if they could.
The EFF went to court to make Diebold comply with North Carolina's
laws for public examination of voting machine software.
Of course, no government should use voting machines whose workings are
secret. But being able to study the source code of a voting machine
is not enough to ensure honest elections, because you can never tell
for sure that the code that you studied is the same code that was used
for the election. What if someone patched the code the night before?
Insist on a Voter-Verified Paper Ballot or on the use of machines
that cannot be programmed at all.
Sharon's plan to start a new party should not be seen
as a hope for peace;
he has never wanted peace.
An officer testifies that he taught Bush forces troops to use
white phosphorus to attack people.
The Bush regime admits that phosphorus shells may have killed
civilians in Falluja, but says that's ok because it had "evacuated the
city". But it didn't.
Men were not allowed to leave, remember?
The UK police have admitted they were wrong to adopt a
kill-without-warning policy without public debate.
FEMA is sabotaging efforts to enable the displaced residents of New
Orleans to vote in next year's elections.
This will affect mainly the poor, black voters who vote democrat.
Given the Bush administration's record of looking for clever indirect
ways to stop its enemies from voting, I expect this is no coincidence.
The Bush regime regards democracy as its enemy; when it advocates
democracy, its characteristic dishonesty is at work.
Supporters of the arrested opposition candidate are rioting in Uganda.
The president says that candidate will have to prove he is innocent of
charges such as treason--which seems to be an admission that his trial
will be unfair. In a fair trial, the state has to prove the suspect
guilty.
Bob Woodward's concealment of being told about Valerie Plame was not
just a technical offense.
He was simultaneously writing an authorized
chronicle of the Bush regime, and denouncing Fitzgerald's
investigation. And maybe lied about another reporter.
I don't follow the argument about how this might
undermine the prosecution of Libby; they didn't
explain that clearly.
Here are the contradictions in Woodward's stories over time.
John Dean says that Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation is too narrow
and that he is failing to use the powers that previous special counsels
have used.
The UK has a treaty to extradite accused people to the US
without a
hearing where the US has to show there is a real case against him.
The US has not ratified the treaty which requires this (and it should
not), but Blair doesn't mind; for him, any excuse to take away
someone's freedom is sufficient.
The major newspapers of the US
nearly always support the government
and business, but a mass of right-wingers excuse them of "liberal
bias" on the slightest excuse.
When that article worries that US newspapers will disappear, I have to
respond that unless they end their right-wing bias, I won't miss them
much. I don't generally read them, since I am so disappointed with
them every time I do.
Bush has a pattern of using or creating crises to distract undesirable
public attention. What crisis is he planning next?
Results are in: religion (at least Christian) does not generally lead
to moral behavior. Just the opposite.
Some highlights: "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of
a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early
adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion".
(Abortion per se isn't wrong, but frequent recourse to abortion is a
consequence of carelessness about sex.)
"Boys who participate in abstinence programmes are more likely to get
their partners pregnant." (These programs are harmful.)
US Congressman Murtha, an Vietnam veteran who formerly supported the
conquest of Iraq,
now calls for withdrawal of the troops over 6
months.
The departure of the Bush forces will unleash the conflicts that their
policies of division have created. The results will be horrible. But
the longer the Bush forces remain in Iraq, the stronger those
conflicts become, so that the inevitable explosion will be even worse
when it does come.
An artist who was
falsely accused of terrorism now faces other charges
based on stretching the law. As usual, the authorities are
unwilling to admit a mistake; if their first accusation doesn't stick,
they fabricate something else, to uphold their claim that anyone they
accuse is surely guilty.
"Tuna ranching" in the Mediterranean is
so efficient that it will wipe
out the fishery soon, if the fishing companies are not effectively
restrained.
Greenpeace activists occupied a hotel being built in a part of
the Spanish coast that is
supposed to be protected.
Direct evidence that the Bush regime knew its claims about Iraqi
uranium purchases were lies.
The New World Order is like
baptizing a bobcat.
The Bush forces pretend that everyone they killed in Falluja was a
rebel, but they openly said they refused to allow any men to leave the city.
The Man Who Sold the War (and various other wars before it)
Most Americans are in favor of torturing suspects, at least occasionally.
This makes me very sad.
Iraqi paramilitaries,
built up in one way or another by the Bush
regime, kill and torture large numbers of Iraqis. Some of their
tortured prisoners were released by other Bush regime forces.
Mordecai Vanunu was arrested after visiting a Palestinian area.
Vanunu told the world that Israel had nuclear weapons, so they
kidnaped him from Italy and imprisoned him for a long time. He was
released at the end of his sentence, but the Israeli government has
put many restrictions on him, including forbidding him even to speak
with foreigners. He has defied these restrictions before.
Kent State University
has dropped its attempts to expel a student for
putting up a banner during a protest against military recruitment there.
More protests are planned.
Why white phosphorus is a chemical weapon.
More and more countries are filtering or restricting Internet access,
including some that you would not expect.
WSIS seems to have little direct effect on anything important, but it
provides an opportunity to show how bad things are.
A former head of the CIA denounced Cheney as the "Vice President for
Torture".
There has been a breakthrough in opening up travel and
commerce out of Gaza.
Tunisian journalists and human rights activists are on a hunger strike
against censorship.
The "Expression under Repression" event at WSIS
was held despite
demands from the Tunisian government to cancel it.
Doctors condemn the Bush forces for blocking medical care in Iraq,
including "attacks on medical facilities, and the killing and
harassment of health personnel and academics."
Repression in Tunis and the
World Summit on the Information Society.
A study finds marijuana helps people with arthritis.
The Revolutioary Association of Women in Afghanistan criticizes
Afghanistan's elections as
not much real democracy.
RAWA has been fighting for democracy across several decades, against
various kinds of oppressors: Soviet-supported, US-supported, and
Islamic fundamentalist.
A Israeli captain who ordered shooting a 10-year-old Palestinian girl
was found innocent by a military court. This affirms that
Israeli policy is "open season on Palestinians."
How the
Great Firewall of China keeps cyber dissidents in check.
Voluntary sexual affairs between pupils and teachers 'can be
beneficial',
reports a professor who has studied them. Prudes are
outraged.
Bush forces officials made false statements in court
about connections between Iraq and Al Qa'ida.
Reporter Bob Woodward was told about Valerie Plame by a "top
administration official" even before the other reporters were.
He has kept this secret for two years.
An Iraqi student reports on how he was tortured by the Iraqi police.
A conservative former government official has denounced Bush
for torture, saying it is designed to create a phony appearance
of a terrorist threat.
Sony's DRM
rootkit includes illegally
copied free software.
However, we should not let these secondary wrongs distract us from the
worst thing about this DRM: it is DRM. DRM is theft!
Specific "Iraqi police" units have been tied to massacres, but the
Bush regime lets them
go on. Sometimes they hold prisoners as hostages for ransom.
I suspect that the Bush regime deliberately stirs up ethnic conflict
in Iraq--part of a strategy of divide and rule, so often used by
conquerors. I think that these death squads were planned all along by
the people that work for (i.e. handle) Bush.
The
hunger strike of Guantanamo prisoners is continuing, and one
prisoner may be close to death despite force feeding through tubes in
his nose.
I don't believe in "eye for an eye" retaliation, but if anyone is to
get this treatment, it would be Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzalez
and so on.
Is There A
New Labor Party In Israel?
Bush is falsifying the history of how he got the US into the war in
order to
criticize his opponents.
Nonetheless, the senators and congressmen that voted for the war had
plenty of reason to doubt whatever Bush told them--and a few examples
such as Kucinich show it was possible to see through the false
world-view which the specific lies fit into.
Former Bush forces soldier Tony Lagouranis tells about the horrible
things he did and saw done to civilians.
CIA director Tenet reported in 2001 that Iraq was no
threat and probably didn't have WMD.
More evidence that the Amman bombings were not suicide bombings
and that
the official story is a lie.
Uganda's main opposition candidate has been charged with
treason, in an apparent attempt to crush opposition there.
The European Parliament excoriated the US while demanding an inquiry
into secret US torture camps in Poland and Romania. The Bush regime
has effectively admitted that
these camps exist.
Bush wants to cut down on factory reports of pollution.
This will help them "save money" (because they won't have to
clean up their messes).
Rhetoric aside, Blair's position on environmental issues
now follows that of Bush.
The environment was the main area where Blair did not follow the Bush
line; therefore, this change means that the influence in the "special
relationship" between Blair and Bush flows entirely from Bush to
Blair. In effect, the claim to be able to influence Bush is another
Bliar lie.
Indian police have charged a Kashmiri with planting bombs in Delhi, in
conjunction with Pakistanis.
'I treated people who had their skin melted', says a Falluja doctor.
Meanwhile,
there are reports that the Bush forces removed houses and
soil that might have given evidence of use of white phosphorus or
napalm-equivalents.
The Bush forces have arrested thousands of Iraqis, and are arresting more
of them
faster than it is considering whether there is any reason to keep
them in prison. This means even "innocent" Iraqis have to wait a long time
in jail.
I put the word "innocent" in quotes because there's nothing guilty
about being in the Iraqi resistance. That's just being patriotic.
The ACLU is helping some Iraqis who were tortured by the Bush forces
to sue Rumsfeld.
Scott Ritter tells how the CIA corrupted the Iraq weapons inspection
process and used it to support a coup attempt, and how this fits into
the overall history of US policy towards Iraq.
Even in the Bush forces there are some heroes. Joshua Key tells the
story of why he chose to
go into hiding rather than commit further
atrocities in Iraq.
Congressmen including Dennis Kucinich demand an investigation of
the White House Iraq Group and how it rigged intelligence to create
an excuse for war.
A German who fled to Canada was sent
back to Germany to stand trial for
his political views.
Despicable as his views are, it is an injustice to make the expression
of them a crime. The danger of Fascism today does not come from
neo-Nazis; it comes from politicians that suck up to business, such as
Republicans and most Democrats in the US.
If Democrats who supported Bush's war were
fooled by his phony
intelligence reports, that is because they were willing to be fooled.
Were the bombings in Jordan carried out by the US and Israel?
I can't easily view the images referenced in the site, but if I could,
I would hesitate to draw conclusions about them--I am not an explosive
expert. But the info in this page about who was killed is
quite suspicious.
And the fact that
some Israelis were warned--but not the hotel or the
police--is also suspicious.
Medical marijuana grower and activist Steve McWilliams
killed himself
last June, rather than face 6 months in prison with no marijuana to
relieve his chronic pain.
If you are ever in a situation like this, don't kill yourself in
private. Make your death itself be a blow against the tyrant. Plead
innocent; then kill yourself in the courtroom, with the jury and
journalists watching, after defying the judge by shouting, "I'm a
medical marijuana grower. You were going to make those 12 honest
citizens your tools for evil, but I will save them from you. May my
death be on your conscience for as long as you live."
A
UN human rights investigator condemned the Bush regime
for denying food and water to civilians in Iraq.
New York State
joined California and other states in adopting special rules to
reduce CO2 emissions from automobiles.
They refuse to sit idly by while Bush plans the destruction of
civilization.
In Europe, laws and public pressure are making businesses respect the environment.
The US ought to do likewise, but the US government is too much in the
grip of business. Until we have a congress and president who don't
mind telling a business to go jump in the lake, businesses will continue
saying that to the public.
Blair is facing an
impeachment campaign.
In Falluja, a year after the town was half-destroyed by the Bush
forces, they continue making life hell
for the inhabitants there: blowing up their cars, stealing their money,
and shooting them. A large fraction of the city is uninhabitable and
is not being repaired.
The Bush forces surely know that these practices will make most Iraqis
want to fight them. So I think their intention is to crush the
resistance by killing a large fraction of the Sunnis in Iraq--or by
getting Shi'ites and Kurds to do it for them. That, I suspect, is why
they carry out "false flag" terrorist attacks against Shi'ites, which
are then blamed on the resistance.
A human rights lawyer who has worked to defend people tortured
by many countries concludes that the "enemy of all humankind"
speaks with
the voice of the United States government.
However, opposition to this one aspect of the Bush regime's barbarity
is growing in
the US. Even TIME magazine is covering the CIA's murder of a
prisoner.
Unfortunately, we're not seeing similar opposition to the
other tyrannical measures of the Bush regime.
The world's
silence over Israel's Abu Ghraibs.
The US is not the only country whose government seems bent on making
people burn as much oil as possible. It's happening
in China too.
The school board in Dover, PA, voted to teach "intelligent design" in
science class. Then the citizens voted to
replace 8 of the 9 members of the school board with Democrats
who are opposed to this. (The 9th member was not up for
reelection; I'm not sure why.)
The UK
tortured German prisoners during World War II, and tortured
civilians afterward, with conduct worth of Nazis.
A criminal suspect in the UK
faces double jeopardy, part of Blair's assault on the traditional
Rights of Englishmen.
This case is somewhat unusual in that a jury never actually ruled him
innocent. But Blair's law would allow double jeopardy even if that
had occurred. This man may have committed a serious crime, or he may
not. But nobody should have to spend his life being tried over and
over for the same alleged crime.
Global warming caused by CO2 increased the amount of water vapor over
Europe, which results in yet
further warming.
For the Bushmen, torture's out.
Now they call it "abuse".
Some Bush forces veterans with real courage talk about the torture
they saw--and
how the Bush forces tried to gag them.
Pushing for impeachment now is
what Democrats
must do, if they want to reinvigorate their party.
Turkish soldiers were caught carrying out terrorist attacks
which were blamed on the PKK (Kurdish independence movement).
This is part of a broader pattern. Two British Bush forces soldiers
were caught in Basra a few months ago with equipment for terrorist
attacks, which they would blame on al Qa'ida.
If Cheney was involved in the 9/11 attacks, as much evidence suggests
he was, it would be another piece of the same pattern.
The Bush regime transports prisoners for torture to various sites in
Eastern Europe (listed in this story)
in crates meant for transporting
dogs. Just being caged in such a small crate is torture.
The Israeli Labor Party
has a new leader who says the occupation is
immoral and calls for evacuating (some) West Bank settlements.
$9 million
to arrange a meeting with Bush? It's a natural part of the
culture of corruption fostered by the Bush regime at all levels.
The violence in Darfur is getting worse,
as international measures to end it have been far too weak.
Supporters of the occupation of Iraq point to the "mobile bioweapons
vans" as proof that Saddam Hussein had maintained the capability to
produce such
weapons. However, these vans clearly fit another purpose, as the
CIA eventually admitted.
Tying the Iraqi death squads to the Bush forces,
through the swamp
of disinformation.
A report of the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq
lists many war
crimes carried out by the Bush forces.
A report
that the Bush forces are injecting Iraqi men with some unspecified
drug, at gunpoint.
A
scientific investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center
towers.
In Afghanistan,
US troops have burned Taliban prisoners alive.
Despicable as the Taliban are--because what they stand for is the
opposite of human rights--once captured they have a right to humane
treatment, just like everyone else.
Bush forces claims that they used white phosphorus only for
illumination of battlefields are
contradicted by their own
publication.
This and countless previous examples show that these people will tell
any lie they think people will believe. They are the forces of
darkness. I'm glad to read that they are having trouble with
recruiting, because that should make it more difficult for them
to invade additional countries.
One congressman is proposing to require Bush to turn over
all drafts of his state of the union speech (making false claims
about Iraq) so as to investigate how the falsehoods got in.
Kucinich's proposal to investigate the White House Iraq Group
(which probably had the job of arranging an excuse for war)
was defeated in committee, 25 to 23.
Meanwhile, Republican congressman Curt Weldon wants an investigation
of whether an intelligence group called
Able Danger informed the
Pentagon about the 9/11 attackers back in 2000, and of what was done
with the information.
People on that team have been
punished for speaking out.
It was reported in 2001 that Clinton's people advised the Bushmen to
give Al Qa'ida high priority as a threat, but that the Bush regime did
just the opposite--at least, in the agencies that were responsible for
preventing such attacks.
The President of China
met with visible protests on his visit
to London.
Rioting in France seems to be subsiding, due mainly to boredom, but
promises of new job training programs might be helping.
However part of that job training program
could have drawbacks. The
proposal is to let youths leave school at age 14 and become
apprentices. This is controversial because it threatens to track the
poor towards vocational education and away from opportunity to rise.
Few of the artifacts stolen from Iraq's museums have been recovered,
or ever are likely to be. And more artifacts are being looted now
from the unexcavated sites,
destroying forever the possibility of
archaeology there.
The Bush forces' invasion led to the theft of our past, which they had
the responsibility to prevent--but they don't care.
The Kansas Board of Education voted to redefine "science" to include
non-natural explanations. Thus, psychic levitation could be taught as
an alternative explanation for airplanes.
Who needs scientific theories such as gravity and aerodynamics, when
we have Intelligent Falling?
Bliar's days in power may be numbered, after
members of all parties
voted to reject internment for 90 days without charges.
However, despite this defeat for Bliar, they nonetheless voted to
reduce civil liberties in the UK--specifically, to allow 28 days'
arrest without charges. There is no reason evidence that such a
change is necessary.
California voters rejected all of Schwarzenegger's ballot
questions, which were designed to apply typical Republican policies.
India's right to information law exposed a
secret plot with the
World Bank for privatizing Delhi's water.
Providing water to India's billion people is a problem that may have
no solution at all. If there were insufficient water supplies, and
investment could make enough water available, private investment would
be one way to do it. (Of course, the government can also make that
investment.) But if global warming makes the rivers that flow from
the Himalayas dry up, investment won't solve the problem.
I think India needs a one-child policy like China's.
The UN condemned the US, and five other countries,
for sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured.
The other countries are Britain, Canada, France, Sweden and
Kyrgyzstan.
Sony's nasty DRM is
accompanied by a "license" for the CD itself. Read about how
nasty it is.
Don't buy Corrupt Disks!
The danger of
martial law in the US.
Dave Airharts, a veteran who now protests military
recruiting, talks about his experiences in the armed forces:
soldiers kicking prisoners for fun in Guantanamo, and shooting cars
full of families in Iraq. The officers encouraged soldiers to consider
Iraqi civilians' lives worthless.
Is white phosphorus, when it melts the skin off children, a chemical
weapon or an incendiary weapon? Is the treaty that prohibits melting
the skin off children in this way the one that the US signed or the
one that the US did not sign? And does it make any difference?
I saw another article which argues that white phosphorus should
be considered a chemical weapon, because the mode of action by
which it melts off children's skin is a matter of chemical action,
not fire. It seems like a good argument to me.
Meanwhile, does anyone know if there is a chemical that neutralizes
white phosphorus?
China executes 10,000 people a year--many of them innocent
of the charges against them. It imprisons dissidents without trial
and tortures them. Meanwhile, it is starting to threaten aggression
against its neighbors.
Bush, go back to China!
Just as the Australian senate is about to have
one day to consider new terror laws, the Australian government
arrested alleged terrorist plotters--showing that additional tyrannical
laws are unnecessary.
UK citizens: sign the pledge to refuse the national ID
card (if 15000 people sign).
France has declared a state of emergency to quell riots that
have spread all
across the country.
Can anyone tell me something about the "social measures" mentioned
briefly in that article? It is necessary in the short term to stop
the riots, but equally necessary in the long term to do something
about their causes. Young people who have committed no crime should
not feel it is necessary to flee from police.
When people criticize Blair for attacking Iraq without authorization
from the UN, he says it's all France's fault, for not granting
that authorization.
I can just imagine a policeman, accused of raiding someone's home and
arresting him without a warrant, saying it's the judge's fault for
refusing to issue the warrant.
The book Fortunate Son, which talks about Bush's use of cocaine,
was censored twice through Bush pressure. Its author died suspiciously
after warning that the police might attack him.
I don't think it is very important whether Bush used cocaine. I think
it is foolish to use cocaine, but not particularly evil; compared to
attacking human rights in the US, or starting a war in Iraq, it is
nothing. But the censorship of this book is very wrong.
Meanwhile, the Republicans now want to probe who
leaked the news about the CIA's secret prisons. It's the same idea: if
you catch them in a crime, they counterattack whoever reported it. If
they are successful, they can get away with murder.
Here's a report
and partial transcript of the Italian TV broadcast about using white
phosphorus and modernized napalm in Falluja.
How the New York Times responded when asked to cover the issue.
The US is already planning how to attack
Syria. This is a war crime.
Cheney's energy task force was studying maps of Iraq before the 9/11
attacks. It seems to be evidence that he was already planning to
start such a war. That too would be a war
crime.
On Nov 2 there were protests across the US to "drive out the
Bush regime". Here's a report on the one that I joined.
Sign the petition for the Dept of Health and Human Services to
take action on a formal petition to recognize the medical value of
marijuana.
Bush's latest
"shia pet" is old Mr. Chalabi.
More
information about Bush's new/old pet.
Bush began preparations for an
invasion of Syria last year.
Today's gays are
forgetting the lessons of safe sex that were learned in the
80s at the cost of so many lives.
Africa's great lakes are
shrinking fast due to human activity.
The European Commission plans
to investigate charges that a secret CIA prison may be
located in Poland or Romania.
The Bush forces are attacking
Husayba with tanks and large bombs. Local people say this is
killing lots of civilians. Experience from Vietnam suggests that the
figures for "insurgents" killed will include the civilians.
The UK prosecution of Bush forces troops for murdering an Iraqi
civilian
has collapsed. Some of the Iraqi witnesses had fabricated
charges of other crimes. That doesn't alter the fact that troops
killed a civilian prisoner and his killers enjoy impunity.
The war
crimes case against the Bush regime.
The Bush forces used white
phosphorus bombs against civilians in Falluja.
A Deadly Interrogation: Can the C.I.A. legally kill
a prisoner? (The Bush regime says "yes".)
Illegal logging of mahogany in Honduras is likely to wipe it out in 15
years. The Honduran government lacks the strength to stop this (and
probably lacks the political will).
The US State Department
disregarded nearly unanimous public objections
and chose RFIDs for new US passports.
Here's
why that is so bad.
(I think that Schneier is mistaken in saying that merely recording
more information about each person is not in itself a danger.
But it is a separate issue from that of the RFID.)
Here's a
larger report on the danger of RFID surveillance.
The chemical BPA, which is found in many plastic objects, can seep out
and gets into human bodies. Since it mimics a hormome,
even minute
quantities of it can damage human health.
Studies that are not funded by companies nearly always find it causes
trouble. Studies funded by companies find no trouble. The reason for
this is clear: funding from business corrupts scientific research.
As Bush was citing information from an al Qa'ida prisoner about
Saddam's cooperation with al Qa'ida,
the Defense Intelligence Agency
had already said he was making it up.
The Bush forces attacked the town of Haditha, turning much of its
population into refugees and crushing most of the town's activity.
This is what Bush means when he speaks of giving Iraq "freedom and
democracy". A doctor was offered $30 as compensation after he was
kicked, bloodied, and left tied up for days. And he was threatened
with punishment if he told the media about it. Typical bully
behavior.
Now they are doing likewise to Al Qaim,
using cluster bombs on urban
areas again. Meanwhile, the "Iraqi" Minister of Defense says that
anyone who treats the wounds of resistance fighters is a "terrorist"
and calls for killing civilians that harbor the resistance. It's
clear whose side he is on, and it isn't Iraq's side.
This is why I refuse to say I "support" these troops. I do extend to
each of them my regrets that he is in Iraq, and my hope that he will
manage to desert before committing any further atrocities, but that is
the kindest word I can offer them.
The developer of Sony's DRM rootkit, found on some Corrupt Disks,
responded to the discovery with
deceptive excuses.
Iraqi witnesses testify about vote-rigging in Iraq,
showing that Bush respects democracy there no more than
he does here.
Since most Americans think Bush should be impeached "if" he
lied in order to invade Iraq, here's
a list of lies.
As Bush tried to sell FTAA to Latin America, Chavez
was outside
speaking to tens of thousands of protestors.
Dick Cheney & co.
have had a plan since the 80s for how the US
should dominate the world. Whatever the problem of the hour,
that plan is always the solution.
A poll shows most Americans want Bush to be impeached "if" he lied to
get the US into war. (We already know there is no "if".)
Today's Republican congressen are unlikely to vote to impeach Bush
no matter what he does, as long as he supports them. So it is useful
to have the Impeachment PAC. Perhaps "I will vote to impeach Bush"
can be a campaign pledge in the 2006 elections.
A government terror campaign is
at work in the Philippines.
Why not let Iraqis vote on
whether the Bush forces should remain in Iraq?
This article claims the report about finding an NSA ethernet key
logger in a laptop is a hoax, and says the text and images were copied
from unrelated documents.
There is more evidence against the specifics of the story itself.
In general, the question of whether you can trust your hardware not to
have malicious functionalities is becoming more difficult as hardware
gets more complex.
If the NSA has not done this now, they could do it next year. So if
you buy a laptop made in the US, how about if you tell me if you find
a suspicious key logger in it?
Colonel Wilkerson says he has documents tying Cheney to the orders for
torture in Iraq (and elsewhere).
The orders were worded in vague terms, a la "Who will squeeze for me
that troublesome suspect", because Cheney hopes that the media will strain
to see in this an excuse to exculpate him.
In Iraq, anyone's unsupported accusation
could put a man in prison.
It takes months, even years, to get out.
US prisoners who were going to testify against a soldier (accused of
torture) have "escaped"--says the Bush regime, through an anonymous
spokesman.
Did they escape to a secret hidden prison camp? Or to the grave?
Merely refusing to state officially what has happened to them
is itself an offense. Governments are supposed to be accountable
for what happens to their prisoners.
My latest song describes what ought to be done to the executives of
companies like Enron.
Amnesty International
has condemned Bliar's plans for new terror laws.
President Chavez
participated in the large protests against a summit meeting
in Argentina where Bush is trying to restart the FTAA.
Putting Libby into the neo-con
context.
A former Bush forces soldier testified that he was told to "shoot
first and ask questions later" against Iraqis, in disregard of the
Geneva Convention.
Alito is more
right-wing than Scalia.
The US is moving steadily towards a police
state. Bush has already created a secret police that reports
only to him.
The Department of Homeland Security has convinced some laptop manufacturers
to
install key-loggers that talk directly to the ethernet port, according
to Hal Turner.
SONY has a
new form of Corrupt Disk. You can't play it on your
computer on a free operating system. The Digital Restrictions
Management let Windows users make a few copies--but the copies are
corrupt too, and only Windows can play them.
It works by installing a "rootkit" on Windows computers--that is,
software that hides in the system, disguising itself from view
while distorting the system's behavior for someone else's ends.
The author of that article deserves credit for investigating
painstakingly, but he should
not have granted any legitimacy to DRM.
SONY is
pretending to have corrected the problem--deceptively.
Ironically, only Windows users are affected by this DRM, which is as
stupid as it is nasty. Thus, you can avoid the problem by using
GNU/Linux instead.
27 Iraqi ex-officials, including former ministers,
face charges of theft.
Now if we can only get Cheney.
A Wal-Mart store reduces local employment by up to 4% and reduces
local wages by 5%. Their CEO is embarrassed, because the supposed
plan to give employees health care has been exposed
as a sham.
The NSA falsified intelligence reports to create an excuse
for the US to fully
enter the Vietnam War.
The Bush forces have started releasing casualty figures for Iraqis,
one-sided figures that do not
include Iraqis killed by the Bush forces.
US plans to
eliminate liability for vaccine-caused illness--even if
the government forces people to take the vaccine--and to keep
information about such problems secret.
Some degree of protection from liability might be acceptable if needed
so that new vaccines will be developed. But this goes too far.
Perhaps in some cases the government should assume the liability,
rather than abolishing it.
There is some progress towards opening a non-Israel-controlled border
crossing from Gaza to Egypt. But mostly Israel is
blocking all progress in negotiations.
Israeli police are preemptively
arresting and holding participants in nonviolent protests--even teenagers.
Madonna's Kabbala guru follows the
example of many other religious leaders: extorting money from vulnerable
credulous people through promises of miracles.
Tyrannical proposed anti-dissent laws in the UK are
meeting strong opposition in Commons. It was not enough to
kill outright, but may be enough to block them anyway.
These proposal should be rejected entirely, not adopted in weakened
form. The UK government already has too much power over dissent.
Meanwhile, it has plenty of ability to deal with real terrorism.
A car bomb
caused many Iraqi casualties outside a mosque in Basra.
It is hard to imagine how a fervent Islamist could justify attacking
Muslims during a principal religious celebration. So I wonder, what
proof is there that the car bomb was set off by a suicide bomber?
Planting a bomb in someone's car without his knowledge is eminently
feasible, and there are accusations that the Bush forces have been
doing just that. Thus my question: is there any specific evidence
that the driver of the car which held the bomb knew about the bomb?
Or did they only determine that the car had a driver, and leap to the
conclusion he was a "suicide bomber"?
If you want to change how big business treats the public, don't make
the mistake of trying to "do it from within". Business for Social
Responsibility, which was founded to try to change harmful business
practices, adopted such a policy; this gave those businesses an
opening to subvert it.
A previous note points out that environmental organizations have been
effective when they stir up public pressure, but ineffective when they
try to work quietly.
In Japan,
a new movement with government support advocates taking life
more slowly, contrary to the overwork ethic.
While Bush was saying that war with Iraq would be a last resort,
the White House Iraq Group was organizing propaganda and lies
to
prepare for the war.
Is Libby taking the fall on behalf of his bosses?
His lies may get him convicted, while preventing
anyone from tracking down what really happened.
(And maybe Bush will pardon him.)
Democrats ought to start
pushing for impeachment of Bush
even though there is no immediate chance of achieving this.
The Bush forces arrested and beat up Iraqi doctors.
Female relatives of Cuban political prisoners, who demand their
release, have been
given a human rights award by the European
Parliament. The prisoners remain imprisoned.
More evidence about secret CIA prisons which disregard the Geneva
Conventions and the US Constitution.
As usual, the Bush regime responds to allegations of torture
with vague blanket denials, which probably indicate that they
have squeezed the word "torture" to exclude the kinds of torture
they practice.
Dubai's only coral reef was
destroyed to build artificial islands
as resorts for millionaires.
The techological plans to build new reefs are worth trying, but it
would have been so much easier to avoid destroying the old one.
Meanwhile, unless these islands are pretty tall, they could be
underwater in a few decades as global warming melts Antarctic ice.
Police lie about their victims in France, too.
It is possible that the police did nothing specifically wrong to these
boys, in the events that led their death, but it appears that a broad
pattern of police brutality is why they felt the need to flee
when they had committed no crime.
Meanwhile, nothing can excuse the lies told about them. The
individuals responsible for those lies tracked down and punished.
Soldiers of the Israeli Artillery Corps have started a campaign
against the use of artillery on Palestinian civilian areas.
Now that Berlusconi, il Ducino, has been
caught helping Bush fabricate
excuses to attack Iraq, he is trying to claim he was opposed to the
war all along.
Whatever the criminal charges will do, Plamegate
has already exposed
the Bush regime's facade of patriotism as a fraud.
The new president of Poland is a right-wing Christian extremist that
would be dear to Bush's heart.
However, his party is also opposed
to overglobalization.
Gold mining creates
environmental disasters.
Not even all Bush forces combat deaths are being reported,
claims this article.
Russia says that the evidence for corruption in the
Iraq oil-for-food program is based on forgeries.
Courageous young Israelis remain in prison for refusing to serve
the occupation.
Rumsfeld's motto: "When faced with an unsolvable problem--expand the
problem." He and Bush are apparently preparing to
expand the disaster
of the Iraq war by attacking Syria.
Military attacks on Syria have already been made.
I'm all in favor of demanding Syrian cooperation with the Hariri
investigation, and everyone else's, too. But the investigation should
be complete, and should not disregard non-Syrian suspects.
Besides, if the Assad regime in Syria falls, where will the Bush
regime send suspects to be tortured?
Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff
as secretary of state, accused Cheney and Rumsfeld of
conspiring
to eliminate the State Department from foreign policy decisions.
Here's the
complete text of what he said:
Uri Avnery:
How Sharon is trying to eliminate Abbas as a partner to
negotiate with.
Bolivian elections were postponed indefinitely...to prevent the
victory of Evo Morales, who opposes US domination of Bolivia.
As Judith Miller turns out to have been less than a hero, it
has
sent the New York Times into turmoil.
The Times has a long way to go to become truthful. For instance, did
it cover Spain's indictment of Bush forces troops for murder of a
journalist?
The US army dumped 64 million pounds of chemical weapons in the
ocean, and
some of the shells are still dangerous.
Greg Palast: OPEC and the economic conquest of Iraq
High oil prices encourage conservation and reduction of CO2 output.
I don't think they are bad at all.
China is cracking down on environmental monitoring.
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