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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Congressman Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment
against Dick Cheney.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Democratic party leaders refuse to support the effort. Shame on them!
The TV show
Supernanny teaches that parental dictatorship is good, but
doesn't measure the harm it does.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Fighting between Ethiopian troops and Islamists continues in
Mogadishu.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Since this article says nothing about the departure of Ethiopian troops, which they previously said would happen very soon, I wonder if Bush has convinced them to make their occupation of Somalia permanent.
Sunni-Shi'ite killings
are back in Baghdad.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Note that the Al Qa'ida attacks described in this article are not terrorism. "Iraqi" soldiers and police are collaborators, working for the Bush forces, and attacking them is attacking the occupying army. It happens that most of these collaborators are Shi'ites.
Mugabe is systematically rigging the next election in Zimbabwe, even as his thugs arrest and attack the opposition.
Attacking opposition leaders and activists is not a new thing for Mugabe.
Since the white colonizers took the land by force, I don't think they have much of an argument to make for retaining it. But there are good and bad ways to nationalize an enterprise. Zimbabwe's way wrecked them.
The Iraqi government has started to withhold figures on civilian deaths. Apparently it was ordered not to show that Bush is lying.
The African force which is supposed to protect the people of Darfur from
the Janjaweed is so undersized that it can barely protect itself.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush wants army news announcements to cooperate with propaganda operations, just as they did in the Vietnam War.
Of course, the "facts" provided for army news announcements are often pre-cooked for propaganda purposes. The US government systematically ordered troops to lie about the death of Pat Tillman from friendly fire, just as they systematically lied to make Jessica Lynch out as a hero. Now the Democrats are showcasing these lies.
How Bush's "military tribunals" will treat confessions obtained by torture
as evidence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This means they are designed to function as part of a system for torturing and "convicting" people regardless of the facts.
A bomb was found at an abortion clinic, designed to kill.
It surely was been planted by Christian theocratic fanatics. Other such fanatics are suing the University of California for refusing to recognize creationist "biology classes" as filling the lab science requirement.
The Panchen Lama, imprisoned by China at the age of 5, is now 18 (if
indeed he is alive), and is still in prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Al Qa'ida successfully attacked Bush forces troops in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This will enable Al Qa'ida to win more support among Iraqi Sunnis, nearly all of whom want to fight the occupiers of their country. They don't all support Al Qa'ida's other mission, which is killing Iraqi Shi'ites. But even those who dislike sectarian war may give Al Qa'ida more support if it conspicuously fights the Bush forces.
UK troops returning from the Bush forces have spoken out to denounce the war. Their base in Basra is under siege by the resistance.
Large supermarket chains are so powerful that they are driving down wages
for farm laborers in India.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This article refers to the UK, but I'd expect it is even more true of the US.
The fighting in Mogadishu has driven 300,000 people to flee the city.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Ethiopians, and the US-constructed "provisional government", have little popular support, and thus no chance of defeating the Islamists.
A brief history of fake news in the US.
Tens of thousands protested in the US to demand reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Sunnis protest against Baghdad's 'prison wall'.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is using skewed statictics to prove that Iraq is safer.
But car bombs are not the only form of killing that Bush omits from these figures. Aerial bombardment by the Bush forces kills lots of Iraqis, and they systematically underreport it.
Mongolian herder Tsetsegee Munkhbayar launched an environmental movement that
made many mines stop polluting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The UK's national health service won't pay for drugs to treat
macular degeneration until the victim goes blind in one eye.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
However, privatized medicine is no solution. The private sector won't treat most of these victims at all (they can't afford it).
Bill Gates gives some of his money to charity, hoping thus to persuade society to overlook the harm he does to get that money.
But how good is this charity really?
Pacific leatherback turtles are headed for extinction, wiped out by human fishing and habitat destruction. A migration "race" with turtles as competitors is trying to get children interested in their fate.
The threats that these turtles face can be found in the "threats" section of this page.
A part of Greenland is revealed as a separate island after the ice shelf connecting it to Greenland melted away.
The Greenland ice sheet is melting faster and faster, threatening to raise sea level by 23 feet and inundate many major cities.
Nigeria's ruling party rigged the elections there.
The opposition has denounced the elections as fraudulent and calls for a new election.
The US elections in 2000 and 2004 were also rigged, and Greg Palast says they are working on rigging the next election already.
In the US:
join the rally in Washington on June 10/11 to end the occupation of
Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Sunni inhabitants of a Baghdad neighborhood don't think that building walls will make them safer. (Perhaps because the death squads that kill Sunnis are Iraqi police and can go where they wish.)
Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki says that the construction should stop, but he can't do anything to stop it, showing how powerless he is.
Mugabe has threatened to expel western diplomats unless they stop meeting
with opposition figures and going to their trials.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
It is better to have the ambassadors expelled than have them remain while neutralized. However, what this shows is that diplomacy is useless. Only armed intervention will save the people of Zimbabwe.
As a dictator and a murderer, Saddam Hussein was no worse than Mugabe. Yet Bush, who called for an attack on Iraq because Hussein was such a tyrant, has no interest in liberating Zimbabwe from Mugabe. Perhaps Zimbabwe has no oil.
B'liar has abandoned Iraqi interpreters who worked for the Bush forces in
Iraq, and now need to flee for their lives.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I don't have much sympathy for Iraqi collaborators, who are rightly being attacked as traitors by their countrymen. But this policy shows the moral corruption of B'liar — the same moral corruption that led to his participation in the attempt to conquer Iraq.
Many Iraqis hold the Bush forces (which they think of as the US)
responsible for the violence in their country.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar is trying to undermine public schools with a system of
company-run publicly-funded schools. Popular opposition has blocked
one of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iran has made progress in uranium enrichment, but is still a
few years away from having the uranium needed for a bomb.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I share the suspecion that Iran is planning to make nuclear weapons, but since they seem to be the only thing that can deter an attack by the US, I can't be very critical of this. Iran might use them for attack, but so might the US. The US refuses to promise not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, even against countries that don't have any.
After a 6-year drought, Australia is about to ban irrigation, essentially wiping out agriculture. This drought is unpredecented and is probably due to global warming. Howard, who had ignored warnings that global warming would reduce rainfall in Australia, now reluctantly recognizes that global warming may be real.
The European Union took a small step towards political censorship by
making it a crime to deny that various genocides took place, when done in a
way that constitutes "incitement to racial hatred".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The added second condition makes the step smaller, but it still goes in a dangerous direction. Even Nazis have the right to advocate their views, and to make "incitement to hatred" a crime is dangerous censorship in itself.
B'liar's recipe for winning hearts and minds away from Al Qa'ida is to work
harder at propaganda. However, it is
hard for propaganda to overcome setting a bad example.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Chinese political prisoner Wang Xiaoning has sued Yahoo! for giving the
Chinese government information that led to his being imprisoned and beaten.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
If there is no way for companies to operate in China without supporting torture, then they shouldn't operate in China. (The same applies to the US.)
Uri Avnery: Why Israel should release its Palestinian prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A well-known Palestinian non-violent activist was raided at night by
Israeli troops who sought to intimidate him into stopping.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The mother of a Palestinian prisoner was imprisoned and shackled so as
to put pressure on her son.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
An Israeli sniper shot a Palestinian teenager, and then shot another
Palestinian who went to rescue him. The teenager died.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Nobel peace prize winner Mairead Corrigan joined in the weekly
protest at Bil'in and was injured by a rubber bullet and tear gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Another non-violent protest, near Bethlehem, was able to break up part of
the annexation wall under construction.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces are getting so desperate that they are sending seriously injured soldiers into combat.
Bush and B'liar called for stronger sanctions against Sudan, for massacres
in Darfur.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
They can't actually do anything, because their armies (and their international prestige) have been worn down by Iraq.
Bush's appointees on the Supreme Court upheld the ban on a specific
late-term abortion procedure, even when it is the best way to protect
the pregnant woman's health.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
In effect, they have found a way to make Roe v Wade meaningless while pretending to uphold it. (Dishonesty from the right-wing is normal practice.) The law is vague enough to be stretched to cover all abortions after 12 weeks.
The neocons who planned the invasion of Iraq are not the leaders of the plot. Others more powerful than they asked them to plan it, and made the decision to carry it out.
The US news media systematically and intentionally slanted the news to
support Bush's invasion of Iraq. Opposition to the war was labeled
"unpatriotic", and talk show host Phil Donahue was fired for not looking
"patriotic" enough.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I would like to know more about the "patriotism police" — how it operated, and who organized it.
In Bangladesh,
Aralia Island is gradually being drowned as global warming makes sea level
rise.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iran officially encourages vigilantes to kill people who don't obey Islamic rules. The Supreme Court just ruled that vigilantes that killed 18 people-- for crimes such as having sex-- can't be executed as murderers. They may however face imprisonment for the killings.
I don't criticize the outcome as such, since I think the death penalty is wrong. But it comes from a combination of two wrongs (having the death penalty, and supporting lynching). They cancelled each other out in this case, but that isn't usually so.
Both of these wrongs come out of Islamic law, which is just another name for brutal tyranny. Respecting individuals' religious freedom does not mean tolerating Islamic law.
Demand for merbau wood for floors is destroying the forests of New Guinea.
In 35 years, this will stop, because that species will all be all but gone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Four million Iraqis have already become refugees, and more are trying to flee, but they are finding it increasingly hard to gain admission anywhere (even in other parts of Iraq).
Large explosions in Baghdad killed many civilians, and showed that the
Bush forces cannot bring security to Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
My proposal for restoring peace in Iraq is to pull the Bush forces out, cancel all actions to steal Iraq's oil and privatize its state assets, and give both the Sunnis and the Shi'ites armed help-- in the form of troops from Islamic countries they can trust-- in maintaining defensive perimeters around their parts of Iraq (and their parts of Baghdad).
In Ecuador,
78% voted to endorse President Correa's plan for a new constitution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
US telephone companies are corrupting many consumer groups into lobbying for them.
As Bush wins favor among Americans by bemoaning the massacre of some
30 people, Americans mostly do not hold him
responsible for massacring 600,000 Iraqis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Last year, the Bush forces pointed to Tal Afar as a picture of success. This year it fell apart into sectarian bloodshed.
Muqtada al Sadr has pulled his party's ministers out of the Iraqi
coalition. He has also recently called for protests against the
Bush occupation of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
In Kandahar, ordinary citizens prefer the Taliban to NATO for simple safety.
They might be happy with a strong secular government too, but they don't see any possibility of that.
A dispute about electronic voting has become an issue in the French presidential election.
It is utterly foolish to use electronic machines for elections. The practical advantages are insignificant compared to what we lose: confidence in the outcome of the election.
After US marines in Afghanistan wantonly killed civilians, they seized journalists' cameras to cover it up. The US government continues to defend their destruction of evidence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been imprisoned for a year by the Bush forces in Iraq, with no charges filed.
It's too bad that the AP won the Pulitzer Prize, rather than Bilal himself. If he had won such a prize, the heat on the Bush regime might be enough to make them release him.
Democratic leaders seem to be standing firm against Bush regarding their flawed but useful bill for Iraq troop withdrawal.
The Bush regime has turned disinformation through the mainstream meda into a weapon, and the world has become aware of this. Now it is trying
to disinform the Internet as well.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Fake drugs are sold in large quantities, and have taught the malaria parasite to develop resistance to the real drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Former Republican Congressman McCloskey left the party, saying "A pox on their values", and became a Democrat.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
While this is good news in the short term, it is partly a reflection of the fact that today's Democratic Party largely has adopted values and policies that once belonged to the Republican Party. As people who sincerely support the former Republican values become Democrats, we who sincerely support the former Democratic values become Greens.
B'liar has done one good thing: a campaign to win control of the International Whaling Commission away from Japan and maintain the controls on whaling.
A court decision in the US, made in the name of copyright law, will shut down Internet radio unless it is reversed. Its retroactive application will bankrupt the netcasters.
The UN as well as Ecuador recognize that human activities are
threatening the ecology of the Galapagos islands.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I think that controlling the human population of the islands must be part of the solution.
Bush plans to turn Baghdad into a semi-prison to end the
violence (and the resistance). It is not likely to work.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis heeded Muqtada al Sadr's call
and protested peacefully, calling for the Bush forces to leave their
country.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Courageous ex-Muslims in Europe have founded an organization to
oppose
religious bullying by Muslims. The death threats they have received
illustrate the evil they are trying to oppose.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
British MP Norman Baker is assembling evidence that Dr Kelly
was murdered by the British government. He already has plenty
of evidence to disprove the official story of suicide.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
11 retired US generals say: cut greenhouse gas emissions today, or fight wars tomorrow.
The B'liar regime is letting Sudanese government officials interrogate Darfuri refugees in the UK.
A federal law that violates the Roe v Wade decision by prohibiting
abortions in many circumstances will
soon be considered by the Supreme
Court. Bush's appointees there were most likely chosen for their
willingness to take away abortion rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
An
article in a major Canadian newspaper denounces the US "war on terror"
as a fraud for stealing oil, and says Canada should pull out of it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Why Israel has no grounds for rejecting the
Arab peace offer.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli soldiers attack Jenin refugee camp every day, just to be
cruel. When they took over the family of pharmacist Ahmed Hourieh,
they admitted that nobody in the family was to be arrested. So they
just made the family stay out in the cold half the night, while they
trashed the house.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
In Qalqilia, Ali Shukri was wanted for arrest. Since he wasn't
home,
police shot some of the women in his family, then blew up
their home, damaging the neighbors homes. That'll teach them not
to live near anyone who is a suspect!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Members of the Palestinian Parliament have been in prison for
a year, charged with the crime of having run as members of Hamas.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Hamas was built up by Israel in the 1980s so as to undermine the influence of Arafat's secular Fatah organization.
In Nablus, Israeli troops following their usual practice of taking civilian hostages and using them as human shields were caught on video. This led to a scandal, which surprised them, because they normally expect to get away with this.
Oxfam International calls for an end to the financial blockade
of Palestine, because it is causing starvation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Police in Baltimore arrested a 7-year-old child for riding a motorbike
on the sidewalk. Then they handcuffed him and took him to the police
station.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I shudder at the thought of what they would do to an adult caught riding on the sidewalk.
Police in Pittsburgh attacked peaceful protestors, then arrested them.
One protestor tried to photograph a policeman who had just made a
nasty remark and the policeman beat him up. Others who tried to
photograph the attack on the first one were then attacked and
arrested. This is part of a long-term systematic campaign of violence
and sabotage against antiwar activity in Pittsburgh.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The police are probably right-wing extremists who believe that dissent is treason. This is par for the course, for police, but Bush is also responsible since he created a climate of disrespect for human rights and dissent.
A suicide bomber attacked the Iraqi parliament, having penetrated 8 lines of Bush forces security checkpoints. It is a dramatic indication that Bush's troop increase has failed to crush the resistance.
Gordon Drown arranged for reports to exaggerate the success of doing
government activities with private financing (and private profit).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A
UN campaign aims to make "sacred" sites double as wildlife preserves.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush has systematically appointed the graduates of a school for
theocratic Christians, many of whom are incompetent or dishonest. And
they are already planning to keep this up after Bush is gone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Garry Kasparov, chess champion turned dissident, was
arrested
in Moscow for a peaceful march to criticize the antidemocratic
policies of President Putin.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Leading Democratic candidates have refused to debate on Faux
News.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Several
Serb nationalists have been found guilty of killing
Bosnian Muslim prisoners in Srebrenica. Bush forces soldiers who have done
similar things have mostly gone unpunished.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
How did Iran treat its British prisoners? Some of the ex-prisoners
describe treatment that is rather nasty, though not as bad as what
Bush does.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
However, there is some reason to think the ex-prisoners were pressured into by the B'liar regime into making false accusations.
I don't find this evidence conclusive. I would not be surprised if the Ahmadinejad regime abuses prisoners, nor if B'liar made the ex-prisoners lie. In any case, we should focus our criticism on the bigger and worse offender: the Bush regime.
Uri Avnery:
the Israeli Shin Bet now considers democratic political
dissent from the definition of Israel as a "Jewish state" as a
security threat.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Police in India tortured Choles Ritchil to death. Mr Ritchil was a leader of the Garo indigenous people.
Evicting people to make a nature preserve is sometimes necessary, but India needs above all to do a better job of protecting its existing nature preserves.
Bush forces casualties this month are going at the
highest rate in the
four years of the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The
prosecutor firings was part of a scheme to cover up
Bush's rigging of elections by distraction. And the cover-up
resembles the Watergate cover-up.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's wars have so drained the army that he hijacked to
conquer Iraq that he has decided to extend tours of duty.
That will not help morale.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Lots of West Point graduates are leaving the army as soon as they can
--
the highest rate of leaving since the Vietnam war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The weakening of the US Army is a good thing. It is far stronger than it needs to be to face any actual military threats to the US, and any additional strength it has is used for unjust wars on behalf of the corporations our government serves.
There are a number of places in the world where governments oppress people so badly that they justify a war of liberation. They include Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Uzbekistan. (Afghanistan was one of them, but Bush failed to follow through because he really wanted to attack Iraq instead.) But there's no chance Bush would use the army for such a worthy cause. What he wants to do is attack Iran.
Bush has a new plan for sabotaging federal agencies whose job is to
regulate business. It seems to authorize the OB to rewrite reports
produced by agency scientists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A PBS program by Bill Moyers shows how the US press
systematically went along with the lies Bush told
to justify his conquest of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's new
spy chief wants even more power to do surveillance in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I have a suspicion that "monitoring foreigners...by tapping phones and email accounts" includes tapping the phones and email accounts of US citizens that the foreigners talk with, or might talk with. In other words, absolutely anyone.
Iran is increasingly selling its oil in currencies other than the US
dollar. This may puncture the power of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
If the US loses its ability to borrow from the rest of the world through commerce conducted in dollars, the full weight of the US economic weakness will come home to roost, and the burden will probably fall on ordinary Americans, as the rich people who benefited from the policies which caused this weakness will evade it. Injustice after injustice.
Wolfowitz, installed by Bush as president of the World Bank and disliked by nearly everyone there, is now in trouble for having kept his girlfriend on the payroll.
I don't think the initial situation was actually wrong; I think it is unfair to fire someone because "Your lover just became head of the organization." On the other hand, the World Bank / State Department shuffle that they set up to disguise the situation cannot be excused at all.
The FBI's focus on terrorism leaves it
short-handed for dealing
with swindlers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
How convenient for Bush's cronies.
A group of scientists and 9/11 victims' relatives have asked the NIST to for corrections in its report on the collapse of the WTC towers.
John Pilger:
Iran may be the greatest crisis of modern times.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iranian diplomat Jalal Sharafi, who was kidnaped early this year and
released just before Iran released the British Bush forces personnel,
says that while a captive he was tortured by CIA agents.
His body
bears witness to this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Speaker Pelosi's visit to Syria
threatens to undermine Bush's desire
to isolate Syria just as Speaker Wright's discussions with Nicaraguan
President Orgeta brought an end to Reagan's policy of arming the Contras
to try to overthrow him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Jimmy Carter praises her visit.
Tigers are
on the way to extinction, because the government of India
has failed to protect them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iran announced that it has begun large-scale nuclear enrichment. President Ahmadinejad says that if Iran is threatened it will pull out of the treaties that block it from producing uranium for nuclear weapons. Iran is not close to building a nuclear bomb -- and due to the IAEA supervision it has accepted, it can't even start preparing uranium to make bombs unless it first rejects that supervision.
If it is true that Iran trains Iraqi resistance fighters, that is not
surprising, since the
CIA funds groups that carry out terrorist
attacks in Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
If Bush is serious about punishing terrorists and their supporterds, he should start with himself.
The antivehicle mines used by the Iraqi Resistance produce shock waves that can cause brain injuries in people who are not visibly injured.
One can compare the unseen effects of TBI from the resistance's IEDs with the unseen effect of radiation from the Bush forces' DU (dirty uranium) weapons, or the unseen effect of standing in "stress positions" for hours or being denied sleep for days.
The official story is that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James
Earl Ray, acting on his own for no particular reason. King's relatives
do not believe this story, and in 1998 they won a wrongful death suit
against others who admitted to conspiring to kill King.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Supporting evidence about this conspiracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's "war on terrorism"
includes releasing terrorist Luis Posada
on bail. Venezuela is seeking to extradite him so as to try him
for the bombing of a Cuban airliner.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Legal scholar and professor emeritus Walter Murphy
has been placed on the "no fly" list
for criticizing Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The "authorities" will probably not admit that that was the reason for putting Murphy on the list. But since they refuse to justify what they do, we are entitled to judge them based on surmise.
Proposal: put a warning on ads for air travel: "flying causes climate change".
Al Jazeera stands firm for freedom of the press,
despite murder and imprisonment of its correspondents
by the Bush regime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli prisons
regularly torture Palestinians 16 years old,
and sometimes down to 14 years, just the way they torture adults.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Over half of the tropical coral reefs for which data is recorded are
being
degraded by overfishing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Cheney is trying
once again to claim that Saddam Hussein worked
with Al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar is planning to keep troops in the Bush forces for 5 years.
A substantial new nature reserve established in Indonesia provides hope for preservation of hundreds of bird and mammal species. However, this is a small fraction of Indonesia's forests, and the overall forest situation in Indonesia remains bleak.
The porbeagle shark has been so nearly wiped out by fishing that the EU decided it could not deserve to be protected.
Ecuador's President Correa has won a confrontation with Congress, permitting the referendum for a new constitutional convention to go forward.
A coming UN report will detail the many threats to humanity and the natural world if we don't cut the CO2 emissions.
Israel took a Palestinian mother hostage to pressure her sons into
making a confession.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
If they do make a confession, we won't know whether it is true or false, but Israel will surely present it as truth.
Israel's retired chief interrogator
proudly discussed his torture techniques in an interview. As he pulled
the life support tubes out of a wounded Palestinian in the hospital, the
doctor willingly turned his back.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bassam Amin is a Palestinian nonviolent activist. His 10 year old
daughter Abir was shot and killed from behind by an Israeli soldier
this year. The Israeli "authorities" lied about it in the usual way.
This article is by Bassam's Isreali colleague.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
300 residents of a Palestinian refugee camp near Jerusalem have been
made refugees a second time; Israel has declared their homes illegal.
This is a common practice of the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
As violence rages in Darfur,
the B'liar regime wants to deport Darfuris back to Sudan. A judge blocked
these deportations, but the government plans to appeal the decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, set up by the CIA
under Bush I, provides the missing
link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It funded them both, in
the 1980s.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
For Bush, sabotaging prosecutors who are willing to apply laws that hurt Bush's cronies is nothing new. He did it as governor of Texas.
The Guardian gives the story behind the Iranian capture and release of British sailors in the Bush forces, and the negotiations involved.
Amnesty International says the prison in Guantanamo is even nastier than before.
A whole town in Australia was poisoned by a lead mine, but even after all
the birds died, the authorities insisted nothing was wrong.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This sort of thing happens when governments value big businesses above the citizens, which is common with today's sick democracy.
Making ethanol fuel from straw instead of corn may be on the verge of
commercial feasibility. But it is not quite certain.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush told the EPA to claim that it has no authority to regulate
CO2 pollution. The Supreme Court ruled that it can.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
However, as long as Bush is in charge, he will probably not let the EPA really do anything.
Canada, Eritrea and Sweden are pressing Ethiopia for information
about their citizens among the hundreds that Ethiopia holds prisoner secretly
on behalf of the Bush regime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
At least one US citizen is believed to be among these prisoners, but his government won't do anything for him.
Democrats in Congress decided not to refer to the "war on terrorism" in
the military budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This change is both correct and important. Since terrorism is a tactic, not a movement or a people or a nation, the idea of fighting a war "against terrorism" is basically absurd. It is not good to endorse absurdities, in laws or anywhere else.
Meanwhile, Bush uses that expression to keep Americans scared, so that they will support measures that hurt themselves or others. Cutting down this practice is very important.
Thailand has "banned" Youtube for a video that insults Thailand's king. So Youtube (a product of Google) says it will implement a special feature so Thailand can block just those videos.
That's not what I would call resolute defense of freedom of speech.
A setback for theocratic Christians: Bush's
anti-birth-control appointee to family-planning post has resigned!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Mugabe's thugs are killing and maiming journalists -- including the one believed to have smuggled out footage of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
The
US Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of the
Guantanamo prisoners who have been denied due process -- for now.
It left open the possibility of hearing the case later.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
MoveOn's founders explain why they supported the flawed Democratic bill that sets a time limit for removing the Bush forces from Iraq. It's not what they really want, but it is progress.
Veterans for Peace is organizing US military personnel (some of whom
have actually participated in the Bush forces) to call on Congress to
end the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The US-backed Afghan government is preparing a press censorship law.
Continuing the War on Integrity, Bush wants to appoint three officials to control pollution who have represented the polluters they would be supposed to regulate.
The Iraq withdrawal bill passed by Democrats in Congress states
various conditions for the Bush forces to remain for more than a few
months.
One shameful condition is passage of the law that would hand
over Iraq's oil to western oil companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
An Australian who briefly fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and
was held in Guantanamo and described by the Bushmen as "the worst of
the worst", is to be
sent to Australia for 9 months imprisonment.
This proves that the US does not really consider him much of a threat.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Part of the deal is that he cannot tell what was done to him in Guantanamo for a year. This is to help the Bush-supporting government of Australia in the next Australian election.
Bush and the US Congress are going to fight it out
over pulling the Bush forces combat troops out if Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Democrats in Congress are in a weak position because they don't dare criticize Bush as he deserves to be criticized.
The UK has some 4 million TV cameras watching people in public. Most of them perform surveillance, but some are used to scold people immediately for fighting and littering.
I don't much mind TV cameras when the limit of what they do is enable someone to watch for fighting, littering or theft. They become a threat to freedom when they are used to make permanent records of where people go. Many of the cameras in the UK are doing just that: the police aim to record all car travel.
UK resident Mahmoud Abu Rideh has won a court battle against a "control order" which greatly denied his freedom even though he was never charged with a crime.
I would like to find out what the new control order says.
The Bush forces
tried in January to capture Iranian diplomatic
envoys that had gone to Iraq to meet with Iraqi and Kurdish officials.
They captured only underlings, but angered Iran enough to spur
retaliation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iran's retaliation showed restraint, since it captured military personnel that had arguably entered Iranian waters without permission.
Iran said recently that the Bush forces will allow its representatives
to meet with the Iranians captured in January.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The EU's carbon trading scheme is
failing to curb emissions from big
polluters.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
It seems to be yet another case of the subservience of government to business.
If our governments don't find the will to stand up to business and impose major cuts in their emissions, the rich people that own the large businesses will buy their way out of the resulting problems -- but that will be impossible for everyone else.
New Mexico has passed a law saying that the state must supply marijuana to sick people that need it.
In other states, which have authorized sick people to grow their own marijuana, the federal government sometimes arrests them. I wonder what it will do in New Mexico.
Henry Kissinger says that victory for the Bush forces is impossible.
He also hints at a solution along the lines previously suggested
here, in cooperation with neighboring countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
No plan that is based on establishing permanent control of Iraq will be accepted by the Iraqi people.
Iraq veterans who oppose the war showed Americans what it's like to be occupied by the Bush forces -- with street theater in Washington DC.
The Taliban executed three Afghans for giving information to
NATO forces. They want Afghans to regard those three as traitors.
If Afghans do see it that way, NATO cannot possibly win.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Maoist rebels have joined Nepal's government, to prepare for a vote on abolishing the monarchy.
Hussam Shaheen, a Palestinian nonviolent peace activist, was arrested
by Israel for a protest chant, and
faces 24 years imprisonment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A
former prisoner in Guantanamo is now running for parliament
in Australia, to spread awareness of torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Uncivilized Iran humilliates its Bush forces prisoners, because it fails to apply the latest Bush regime norms. (By Monty Python.)
A
report perhaps coming from Russian intelligence says that
Bush is planning to attack Iran on April 6.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
There is speculation that the Iranian capture of some British members of the Bush forces may have been intended to prevent an attack.
A foreign resident of Thailand has been sentenced to 10 years in
prison for
spray painting over pictures of the king.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Nobody has a right not to be criticized -- not a king, not a prophet. Nobody.
Heavy fighting has broken out in Mogadishu between the Ethiopean
troops and the Islamists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Lots of people predicted this would happen.
After the US released some Russian citizens from torture in Guantanamo, it sent them back to Russia, where some have been tortured into confessing crimes.
Russian officials gave diplomatic assurances that it wouldn't do this, but I am sure they knew that the Bush regime would wink at noncompliance. This is why diplomatic assurances that "we won't torture them", coming from a regime that regularly practices torture, are worthless.
San Francisco is moving to ban plastic shopping bags from supermarkets and drugstore chains. Paper bags are made from cutting trees, it is true, but these trees are renewable resources.
The UK's CO2 emissions are soaring, showing that all of B'liar's talk about reducing them is just B'lies.
B'liar's government plans to reverse its US-imitating policy of more and longer prison sentences, and aim for rehabilitation instead.
Remember the cute baby seals that were killed in Canada for their fur?
Thanks to global warming, all the baby seals in the Gulf of St
Lawrence died this year. This problem, together with several years of
unsustainable hunting, has devastated the population.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
But Canada will allow hunting there anyway.
The other populations of these seals are not yet affected by the warming, but they will be in the future. Global warming is leading to the elimination of permanent ice in the arctic, and this could cause the species' extinction -- along with that of polar bears.
In Denmark, anyone found near a protest can be arrested, and is
considered guilty unless proved innocent.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
As the Amazon rainforest is cut down for soybean production, often
illegally, the shutdown of an export terminal
could be a substantial
victory, if it is not reversed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
RFIDs are being
secretly snuck into many products,
including credit cards. You can detect them with an
RFID detector,
and
you can smash them with a hammer.
[References updated on 2018-04-18 because the old links were broken.]
Bisher al-Rawi, who has been imprisoned in Guantanamo for 5 years despite having worked for British Intelligence, may be released to return to the UK.
The UK government for a long time refused to even try to get him out.
A joint committee of MPs concluded that the
UK's asylum system is "inhumane".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Mugabe's police are arresting large number of the opposition in
Zimbabwe, and beating them up just out of spite. Others in his own
party seems to be looking for a way to get rid of him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The US mass media repeatedly and systematically attacked Gore using false and distorted quotations. They accused him of "lying" for words he didn't say.
I don't support Gore, and I didn't in 2000, because he bows down to big business almost as much as Republicans do. He supports antidemocratic "free trade" treaties. When he was vice president, he tried to pressure South Africa not to authorize licenses for generic medicines for AIDS -- acting, in effect, on behalf of the drug companies. (Nowadays the Bush regime does the same thing.)
However, Gore's real faults don't make the media's dishonest campaign against him any more excusable. It was in no way based on Gore's real shortcomings. It was simple character assassination. I would expect it was planned by the executives of the media companies, who know which candidate they favor.
Gore is not the only victim of this. Remember how Howard Dean was attacked, when he was the front runner for the Democratic nomination, by playing his shout of victory in a distorted way? He had recently criticized media concentration, so the media lied about him nonverbally.
I can testify myself to the arrogance of reporters. Many of them insist on calling the GNU system "Linux", and present the shallowest of reasons to justify this unfairness -- and then they expect me to be desperate for their attention.
Many US sources support Iran's contention that the
US is already engaged in acts of war against Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
As the Amazon rainforest is cut down for soybean production, often
illegally,
the shutdown of an export terminal could be a substantial victory-- if it
is not reversed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The US Senate joined the House in passing a requirement to remove
the Bush forces from Iraq. But it lacks the binding deadline
of the House bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
These bills are not what ought to be done. What ought to be done is to pull out all the troops, without delay. Nonetheless, they are much better than nothing, as evinced by Dubya's reaction.
It is interesting to analyze the fallacious Bush responses -- all based on trying to confuse the issue.
B'liar says the captured Bush forces marines and sailors were in Iraqi waters. This article argues that, although no one can be sure, it is more plausible that that location constitutes Iranian waters.
However, the Iranians could have just told those Bush forces personnel to leave. That they did something more serious might be a response to threats of war, undercover forces infiltrating, terror attacks, etc.
Former Congressman Bob Barr, former extreme prohibitionist, is
now lobbying for the Marijuana Policy Project to end federal
anti-marijuana activity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bangladesh is being affected by climate change in many disastrous ways.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Darfur aid relief 'close to collapse', UN chief warns.
When businesses face criticism for mistreating the environment or
the public, they have a
large toolbox of arguments they use,
whether valid or not, to deflect pressure for regulation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Japanese Prime Minister Abe made an inadequate apology to the women that the Japanese Army used as prostitutes. not recognizing that the Army forced them into this.
In Indonesia, the Japanese occupiers convinced families to send their teenage daughters for "education in Japan", but the ships took them to military zones where they were forced to act as prostitutes. After the war, those who survived were too ashamed to try to go home. Pramodya Ananta Toer encountered some of them while a political prisoner, and later collected testimony which shows how widespread and systematic this practice was.
The Bush regime has decided to reinterpret the Endangered Species
Act
so as to negate much of its effect.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A
highly respected Spanish judge who has been involved with the trials
of many important terrorists, has called for war crimes charges to be
filed against Bush, B'liar, and their former Spanish supporter, Aznar.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime intentionally sabotaged the DOJ's case against the big tobacco companies.
Native groups from Alaska have joined many others to
ask
Congress to put limits on CO2 emission.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A large coal company is lobbying to replace that with research on "clean coal" technology--research which might, perhaps, provide an acceptable alternative. An absurd idea.
What it is like for Iraqi refugees fleeing to Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The New York Times published a picture of threatening message from a wall in Baghdad. This article claims that the message must have been written by someone that didn't really speak Arabic.
The
EU may try again to write a constitution (without using that
name).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
With current political leadership, no good can be expected from this. The proposed constitution enshrined the power of business, and they are likely to try that again.
A US lawsuit accusing Rumsfeld of presiding over the torture of prisoners was thrown out on the grounds that the prisoners have no right to sue.
A system that refuses to hold officials that allow torture responsible for their actions is a system that endorses torture.
After The Lancet published a study estimating that the invasion of
Iraq had caused the violent deaths of 600,000 Iraqis, B'liar's
scientific advisors told him that the study's analysis was valid.
B'liar and his men
then told the public that the report was invalid.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The B'liar regime has still not admitted the truth. I have read elsewhere that the BBC used the Freedom of Information act to find out what the advisors said. No wonder B'liar wants to destroy the Freedom of Information act.
For more information see here.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
In Ulster, the
leaders of the Catholics and Protestants have
made real peace, and now will go into government together.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces use around 50,000 private mercenaries in addition to the soldiers who are officially soldiers. Around 800 have been killed, but they are not included in the casualty lists. Since military regulations do not apply, it is hard to get any information about them.
Mugabe has imposed a state of emergency, sending police hit squads
against opposition leaders.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Somalis who fled to Kenya were interrogated by the US and then
flown to secret prisons in undisclosed locations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iran captured some Bush forces marines and sailors who were inspecting
a civilian ship.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iran says they were in Iranian waters, while B'liar says no. Neither side can be trusted, though.
International double standard: Iran and the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Iran is no champion of human rights either; it arrests people without trial and sometimes tortures them. However, it has not started wars of aggression.
Iran's democracy is rather limited, since elected officials can be overruled by the mullahs, and candidates cannot even run without their approval. The US' democracy is rather limited, since elected officials can be overruled by the "free trade" treaties that transfer power from the state to business, and candidates have little chance of winning national office without support from business.
Former Bush forces Sergeant Provance, who was gagged when he tried to push the Abu Ghraib torture investigation to the higherups that instigated the torture, reports on what he saw at a screening of "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib": Senator Lindsey Graham openly endorsed torture.
The governors of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Republicans of course,
are planning to rob the treasury by privatizing the turnpikes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
After opposition activist Tendayi Goneso fled Zimbabwe, the police killed his wife because they couldn't get him. Now, as Mugabe's rule heads for absolute cruelty, the UK seems to be preparing to deport him back to Zimbabwe.
That site has badly designed HTML; you may need to go to the 18th article by hand.
Uri Avnery: Palestinian school textbooks don't recognize
Israel and its frontiers. And Israeli school textbooks don't recognize
Palestine and its frontiers -- so they are even.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Genetically modified crops could be responsible for wiping out bee
populations. They don't kill bees directly, but seem to destroy their
immune systems.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Dr. Hansen testified to Congress about
how NASA gagged him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The orders were given verbally so as to be able to deny they were given.
It appears that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was tortured into false
confessions--like many other Guantanamo prisoners. Even worse,
Senator Lindsay Graham knew about the torture of Khalid Sheik
Mohammed, and did nothing to stop it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The US House of Representatives approved a law requiring combat troops
from the US to be withdrawn from the Bush forces, by September 2008.
But this doesn't include all the troops in the Bush forces, so it
doesn't really require a withdrawal, or an end of the occupation and
colonization of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli police had arrested a Palestinian, without charges of
course.
To put pressure on him, they humiliated his family and made
them pretend to be prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Congressional democrats have backed down on plans to block Bush from attacking Iran, thus in effect consenting to a war at any time.
Congressional democrats have backed down on plans to block Bush from attacking Iran -- obeying AIPAC over the objections of most American Jews.
Belgium has passed a law banned Dirty Uranium shells and armor. After
two years, the US will not be allowed to bring such weapons into
Belgium or ship them through Antwerp.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya's War on Integrity continues
one that was started by Reagan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
One point that this article does not mention is Reagan's destruction of anti-trust law, which was only partly reversed by Clinton. This, together with the transfer of power to large companies brought about by Clinton's "free trade" treaties, has made the general politcal situation much worse for progressives in a long-term way.
In the Siria Valley of Honduras,
a gold mine takes all the water,
so that poor people have to buy water to drink. The government
hardly taxes the mine at all, so they get very little in exchange
for the loss of their water.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Birds in the US are
staying north for the winter -- possibly due to
global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
An Italian journalist,
held by the Taliban as a spy for two weeks when
he sought an interview, tells a story of bloody cruelty alternating
with hospitality. Before the Taliban decided he was a journalist and
let him go, they beheaded his driver.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Later it was revealed that the journalist had been
exchanged for Taliban prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The
occasions when FBI has got personal information beyond even the
weak limits of the U SAP AT RIOT Act may number 3,000, and 600 of the
cases may be flagrantly illegal.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This does not count the times when the U SAP AT RIOT Act legally authorized the FBI to trample our rights. They number almost 1000 a week.
Gordon Drown announced plans to cut taxes on some low-paid workers, but increase taxes on the lowest-paid workers.
What poor people need is not a tax cut (assuing their taxes are fairly low already), but rather increased social services paid for by taxing the rich.
Uddhav Bhandari, who fled to the UK from Nepal after exposing police corruption there, went to a hearing that could have decided to deport him back to Nepal. Rather than plead his case, he set himself on fire and died.
Refugees like Bhandari should not have to fear deportation. Shame on the UK!
Proyecto Varela is a campaign for human rights in Cuba. Oswaldo Payá obtained more than 10,000 signatures on a petition for a referendum for basic freedoms, such as freedom of the press and association, and release of political prisoners. According to the Cuban constitution, that means the referendum must be held -- but it has not been.
Payá seeks peaceful reconciliation among Cubans, and wants to preserve the achievements of the Cuban revolution (health care, education, elimination of extreme poverty, and independence from the US and multinational business). As a result, the right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami don't like him either.
Most reports say that Castro regime holds 284 people prisoner without trial in Cuba, but the last reliable figures are from late 2005: 70 political prisoners.
The bulk of the prisoners held without trial in Cuba -- almost 400 -- are not held by Castro's government. They are prisoners of the Bush regime, in Guantanamo.
All of these prisoners, whichever government holds them, deserve to be freed, or given fair trials.
A Bush official who came from the oil business made hundreds of changes in US government reports, all to deny global warming.
Even more disgusting,
some Republicans in Congress support it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree, however, with the accusation that Cooney acted out of loyalty to Bush, who had appointed him. I would say that Cooney continued was working for the oil companies once he was nominally working for the US government -- just like Bush and Cheney.
Four years after Bush's invasion, Iraq is a blood-drenched disaster.
A rare journalistic visit outside Baghdad shows the level of violence
in the rest of Iraq, and how little the Bush forces (whether nominally
American or Iraqi) can do about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Congressional democrats are trying to reverse part of the Bush regime's policy of secrecy.
Supermarkets in Venezuela have been
pushing up prices of basic
foodstuffs--doubling them in some cases. Chavez told them that if they
do this, they will be nationalized.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Price controls have a tendency to cause shortages, so they may be part of the cause of the problem. However, businesses that take advantage of such situations with speculation are not innocent. Nonetheless, I would probably prefer to break up the big supermarket chains, introducing more competition, rather than control prices.
Zimbabwe's dictator is arresting opposition leaders as they try to leave
the country.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The opposition has walked out of the Egyptian parliament in protest against new laws to suppress political opposition.
Professor Zimbardo,
past president of the American Psychology
Association, says that torture in Bush's prisons resulted from
a system that encourages it, and that Bush should be tried for
war crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Hear, hear!
A secret Bush regime plan, written for the State Department by oil company executives, called for using the occupation of Iraq to raise the price of oil, so as to make a windfall for the oil companies.
A high oil price promotes conservation, so in itself it is good. But it ought to be accompanied by a windfall profits tax, so that the windfall goes to the treasury and not to Bush's cronies. However, that's not what Bush would want. Enriching his cronies is his aim.
Tony B'liar may someday face trial in the International Criminal Court for the crime of starting the war in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A court ruled in favor of prosecution on drug charges of a sick woman, whose doctors say only marijuana can keep her alive. If she is convicted and sentenced to prison, it would amount to a death sentence with a very painful method of execution.
Two activists who vocally supported Palestinian rights in the 1980s
have been persecuted by the US government for 20 years. When judges dismiss
charges, the US government files new charges.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
They have just won dismissal of the charges against them, but will Bush allow that to stick?
The nuclear power industry has hired
spokesmen formerly
associated with the environmental movement, and presents them
as environmentalists for nuclear power.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed planning the 9/11 attacks in the US and other terrorist attacks.
Since this confession was presented in a secret trial, we have no way of telling whether he really confessed at all. If he did, we cannot be sure the confession is true. Torture will make people confess to crimes they did not commit, and we know he was tortured.
Beyond general suspicion, there is evidence that this confession is
not true: he confessed to planning to bomb a bank which was founded
only after he was captured.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush regime continues to torture prisoners, in Iraq as well as in Guantanamo.
Bush deserves a fair trial before he is imprisoned for this. And he should not be tortured.
Police in Pakistan rampaged through a newspaper and TV station's office, to stop them from showing videos of protests.
A statement by the organization attacked.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The old Union Carbide plant in Bhopal is poisoning the public again.
The Indian government is ignoring its own laws and court judgment by
failing to supply them with potable water.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A new Palestinian national unity government might end the fighting between Hamas and Fatah. It has also won recognition from Norway.
The conditions that the US and EU demand of the Palestinians would be fair if they were demanded also of Israel. Israel must recognize the existence and territorial integrity of Palestine in exchange for a similar recognition from Palestine. And it makes no sense to demand that Palestinians end their rather small level of violence without demanding that Israel end its much greater level of violence.
Halliburton is planning to move to Dubai, apparently so as to thwart investigation of how it robbed the US treasury with Cheney's help.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Zimbabwean opposition leader Tsvangirai points to the injuries from his beating in prison to galvanize opposition.
Chiquita Banana funded paramilitaries in Colombia, and shipped arms to them. They killed union organizers, which Chiquita must have found useful. Eventually Chiquita informed the Bush regime, and continued supporting the paramilitaries for almost a year after.
The article says Chiquita sold its Colombian subsidiary, but I wonder what relationship they continue to have. Perhaps it is enough relationship that Chiquita remains morally responsible for its current conduct, though I do not knoow.
Compare this with the world-wide boycott of Coca Cola Company for using paramilitaries to kill union organizers in Colombia.
The US is now spending over a trillion dollars a year on security, defense, and offensive war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
UN investigators place the responsibility for massacres in Darfur
squarely on the government of Sudan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Torture Gonzales is in political trouble for the political firing of
US attorneys that had too much integrity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Gonzalez was operating on orders from Harriet Miers, a close aide of Bush.
It seems plausible that Miers discussed this with Bush, even though we have no proof yet. But even if he did not specifically approve this plan, he is responsible for it, because it comes out of the general climate of corruption created by his War on Integrity.
A Sikh faces jail in India for 'singing about human rights'.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
In a wealthy area of Sao Paulo, poor squatters who live in an abandoned
building wait to be evicted.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
They are squatting because they are poor, not on principle. They would surely be happy to be bought out for a price that would be small potatoes to the rich people that want to use the site. Their refusal to pay that amount just reinforces the nastiness of their greed.
An Iranian blogger who was arrested for reporting on a police raid has been freed -- but other human rights activists have been arrested.
I've seen reports that the US does support violent separatist groups in Iran. And the US does have a practice of feeding money to opposition groups even in democratic countries, for motives that have nothing to do with human rights. This is a disaster for human rights workers, since it means that US funds are tainted.
Bliar has put forward a bill setting up a framework for
major reductions in CO2 emissions in the UK. However,
it
lacks the penalty provisions necessary to make sure it is
enforced, and doesn't spell out policies to reach the targets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Pakistan's ruler Musharraf has arrested the chief judge, who was taking his job too seriously in a case about hundreds of human rights activists that have been disappeared, Bush-style. Lawyers protested this, and were attacked by policemen, receiving the treatment usually reserved for poor and unprestigious people that protest.
B'liar's callous response to
greater poverty in the UK
compared with the rest of Europe is to reduce aid to the poor.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces
soldiers accused of beating prisoner Baha Musa to
death have been all acquitted. No one will be punished for his
murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A colonel was acquitted based on evidence that higher officers had approved the forms of violence that killed Baha Musa. "Just following orders" is not supposed to be an excuse!
Another Bush forces soldier testified that his commander ordered him to kill prisoners, then create fake evidence of a struggle.
What this means is that the Bush forces can murder civilians with impunity, and can establish policies that encourage such murder with impunity.
Amnesty International reports on how the paramilitaries
of Colombia have built corrupted much of Colombian society.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
These paramilitaries were supported by the Colombian government which was in turn supported by the US government.
Companies are paying thousands of bloggers to promote products and not admit it is paid advertising.
Australian mining companies are using copyright law to suppress satirical criticism of their policies.
Rite Aid drugs works closely with the tobacco companies and lobbies against measures to reduce smoking. So when the American Heart Association cooperate with Rite Aid, is that honest?
To me, it is an instance of the systematic corruption of civic institutions in the US by corporate money.
Serbs were not the only ones to commit acts of brutality in
Kosovo. After the Albanian Kosovars won,
they more or less chased out the Serbs.
The former leader of the
KLA is now accused of ethnic cleansing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
(I think that it was less bad to have the Serb minority chased out than to have them oppressing the Albanian majority. So the de-facto independence of Kosovo was a good thing. But this does not justify mistreating unarmed Serbs.)
We all know how Wal-Mart mistreats its own workers, but that's just
the tip of the iceberg of the harm it does. Through its size, it
almost
compels producers to run sweatshops,
making Wal-Mart a substantial producer
of poverty world-wide.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
As captive women raped and used as prostitutes by Japanese troops
increasingly speak out to condemn what was done to them,
the Prime
Minister of Japan is lying to deny it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
China's report on human rights in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The first section, about levels of violent crime not committed by the government, seems like a side issue to me; go past that to see the real meat of the report.
Isn't it a shame that the US has sunk so low that it is no longer in a position to criticize China?
Indians like Harriett Nahanee aren't the only people trying to stop British Columbia from building a new highway and destroying rare ecosystems.
Police in Tacoma violently attacked a nonviolent protest against the embarcation of army combat vehicles to join the Bush forces in occupation of Iraq. The protestors are undeterred.
Police in the US must decide whether to serve the people or the traitor in the White House.
Please do not look at the videos on Youtube, because you would have to install a non-free program (the Flash player) to do that, and installing non-free software is not ethical. I am unhappy with the fact that some of my speeches have been posted on Youtube, where they act as inducement for people to do exactly the thing I believe they should not do.
I hope to write to the people who run the indybay site and ask them to post videos on their own site rather than on youtube.
Bush's "Iraqi government" has arrested the woman who accused three "Iraqi policemen" of rape.
This reflects the junction of the civil war with the Islamic attitude towards women: that they are men's property. It is the same attitude that shows itself when women are murdered by male relatives who believe the woman has damaged her value to them by choosing her own lover.
The latest UN treaty, the International Convention for the Protection
of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, commits governments not to
keep prisoners secretly or in secret prisons. Of course, such bastions
of liberty as
the US and the UK did not sign it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI has often misused the warrantless surveillance powers that
were given to it by the U SAP AT RIOT Act, says a DOJ investigator who
reviewed FBI practices. That law gives the police power that cannot
be allowed in a democracy, but even that wasn't enough to satisfy them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime tried to avoid having such reviews, so that we would not find out about this.
Iraq's ancient minority groups are being
systematically driven into exile.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Israel planned last summer's invasion of Lebanon in advance, and
planned to use the capture of some Israeli soldiers (whenever that should
happen) as an excuse. Avnery draws an interesting conclusion: that these
events refute the theory that Israel controls US foreign policy. However,
lobbyists are pretty effective at stopping US politicians from criticizing
the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Many US citizens are being denied Medicaid payments due to a new
requirement to prove one's citizenship.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Taliban claims the kidnapped Italian reporter was spying for Britain.
I wonder if they tortured him to get this confession.
Bush is touring Latin America -- mostly countries whose goverments are subservient -- hoping that promises to "pay more attention" to the region will win support.
Note the deception embodied in presenting the issue as one of how much attention the US pays or will pay to Latin America: it assumes that such attention is beneficial, which is contrary to the facts.
But the people of these countries are not fooled.
Another Russian journalist has been murdered (though it's supposed to be suicide, if you believe that).
Global warming is causing many animals in the UK to be born weeks
too early, which can endanger them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
And this is just the beginning of what will happen.
Human production of CO2 is not just heating up the atmosphere. It also makes the ocean more acidic, and this has unpredictable effects on life and chemistry in the ocean.
Bush's "temporary surge" is turning into a permanent increase.
Who would ever expect Bush to tell the truth?
Turkey's liberal intellectuals have been silenced by a nationalist
campaign of prosecution and murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The city of Copenhagen evicted and tore down a youth center which was originally a squat, but later was authorized.
The city cannot justify this on the fact that the building had been sold to a church, because selling it and providing no replacement was the initial wrong, and it was the city's fault.
American life directs most Americans into permanent debt that they will find it hard ever to escape from.
As part of Bush's plan to reduce US attorneys to slavish obedience, he appointed a man who helped Bush steal the 2004 election, using a scheme to systematically disenfranchize Black voters who are homeless, away at school, or in the armed forces.
Greg Palast argues that this scheme was a felony: this man should be a defendant, not a prosecutor.
Amnesty International denounces the UK for deporting people to
deporting people to countries where they are likely to be tortured.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar justifies this on the strength of formal assurances from those governments that they won't torture these people -- but those governments are well aware that B'liar would rather help them cover up such torture than take them to task for it.
Scooter Libby, Cheney's former aide, has been convicted on several
charges, taking the fall to protect Cheney from something (and conceal
from us what that something is). People suspect that Bush will
eventually pardon him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The US needs a constitutional amendment to prevent presidents from pardoning people that commit crimes on their behalf.
US forces tried to bomb Taliban fighters in a village, and killed
a family instead.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Yes, it was dirty of the Taliban to retreat into a village, but the US forces have to learn that, unfair as it may seem to them, they must not bomb the village when that happens.
Hamas removed a book of Palestinian folk tales from Palestinian schools
because it talks about sex. Other Palestinians have protested this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The success of Hamas is due to its refusal to accept the occupation. The harm done by Hamas' imposition of strict religious standards is therefore indirectly due to the occupation. (Hamas was originally built up by Israel in order to weaken the PLO.)
The UK Royal Society for the Arts condemned drug prohibition as "driven by moral panic", based on a prejudice against drugs other than tobacco and alcohol which often are safer than them.
The Bush regime has a
pervasive policy about journalists talking with
soldiers: positive stories only!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
10 ways that US-style sprawl development is harmful.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I could add that low-density living makes it hard for buses and trains to work well, condemning people to dependence on cars, which means more energy use, more likelihood of wars over oil, etc.
Some environmental-minded investors
bought out a company that
was planning to build 11 new coal-fired power plants,
and killed 8 of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Only 4% of those arrested under the UK's "anti-terror laws" has been
charged with anything.
Clearly the laws are being used for fishing
expeditions (as well as to suppress protests).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush would have pushed that percentage up higher, by framing the people arrested by mistake, or kidnaping them and not reporting it.
A
major international campaign is starting to study the
melting of ice in the Arctic and Antartic.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Several
men arrested filming the attacks on the World Trade Center
appeared to be Israeli spies. It looks like they were part of a
network that was monitoring the hijackers, and that maybe they knew
about the attack in advance.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush had them released and shut down the investigation into what they were doing.
While Germany issues arrest warrants for the CIA kidnapers of Khaled El-Masri, a US appeals court rejected his lawsuit on the grounds that the relevant evidence is a state secret.
The court explicitly said that the regime can protect any sort of injustice, no matter how egregious, and need not even explain why. It adds up to carte blanche for kidnaping and torture, even murder.
A reporter for Al Jazeera, who has been held prisoner in Guantanamo for 5 years without charges, is being force-fed through the nose after two months on hunger strike.
He says that the Bush regime's agents tortured him when he refused to incriminate Al Jazeera, and that they threatened to harm his children. Standard tactics for tyrants.
The NIH makes reports on chemicals likely to damage human reproductive systems, but outsources this to a consulting company that mostly works for other businesses. Its other employers may be influencing the reports.
There is a systematic pattern that studies of drug effects are less likely to show any problems when the studies are funded by drug companies.
Is this because the funding corrupts the investigators, or is it because the drug companies study "safer bets"?
One approach that might make it unnecessary to answer this question is to put a tax on the sale of patented drugs, and use that money to fund studies of drugs that drug companies want to produce.
An African army is arriving in Somalia, but it doesn't seem to be able to prevent the violence there.
The leader of neighboring Djibuti says that
things are no safer in the
region after the defeat of the Islamic Courts government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A mysterious disease is killing honeybees in the US. It has already
killed most of them. This can be a disaster for agriculture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Iraq's ancient minority groups are being
systematically driven into exile.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Augustin Aguayo, who was sent to the Bush forces as a medic, was
forced into combat duty despite being a conscientious objector. So he
refused to go to Iraq again. Now he faces 7 years imprisonment.
(He was convicted, I read later.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
I do not agree with Aguayo's belief that war is never justified. For instance, because the occupation of Iraq is a crime, fighting against it is justified.
However, the treatment of Mr. Aguayo is a different issue. US laws recognize that people with his views have a right to conscientious objection, and he ought to be allowed that status.
What we are seeing is yet another instance of the Bush regime's pattern of denying people their legal rights.
Harriett Nahanee, an Indian in Canada who protested against plans to
sell off tribal land for a highway, received a two-week prison
sentence. As
she was old and sick, this was a death sentence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This article does not say what Harriett was accused of, nor whether she actually did it, nor give us a basis for judging whether it was right or wrong if she did do it. However, sentencing a sick person to prison without what's needed for that person's health cannot be justified by any possible crime.
Killing people this way is done in the US too.
France has passed a law making it a crime for anyone but a professional journalist to photograph an act of violence. This means that police who want to attack someone on the street, perhaps a protestor, are protected from video recordings. If someone does catch them in the act, that someone probably won't dare testify.
And anyone making a video of a protest, when the police start attacking the protestors, will also be in danger of imprisonment.
France needs a hero who will defy this law -- and then dare the French government to prosecute him, because by doing so it would prove how evil it is.
Bush is starting diplomatic contacts with Iran over what to do in Iraq.
Maybe it is a step forward.
Measuring
how the Iraq occupation has stimulated Islamist violence
around the world.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Substituting ethanol for gasoline is creating grave environmental destruction in Brazil, where environmental laws are not enforced. And it is driving up the price of food. People could starve to fill your car's ethanol tank.
US troops in Afghanistan panicked after an attack, and fired at cars and pedestrians just passing by. This has led to big protests.
Such events happen in every war, and especially when a foreign army is involved. The local people will tolerate it if they feel that army is fighting for their cause and doing its best. Otherwise they will tend to turn more and more against the foreign army. It is a dynamic that is almost inevitable.
When Afghan journalists took pictures of the civilian cars that US
troops had destroyed, the
soldiers destroyed the pictures. Then Bush
spokesmen denied that this had been happening, trying to destroy the
news of the destruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
This follows the general Bush policy towards unfavorable press: block it.
Israel has blocked Palestinians from fishing in from boats
for most of a year. This exacerbates food shortages in Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The excuse of blocking communication with Egypt is absurd, since it would be just as easy to patrol further off shore instead.
Harassment of civilians, with an excuse that covers it when you don't look very hard, is standard practice in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Prominent British Jews who oppose Israel's treatment of the Palestinians have formed a new organization, Independent Jewish Voices.
This breaks the apparent monopoly of an old organization that supports Israel 100% and claims to represent all British Jews.
As the Army Secretary resigns, the Bush regime has decided to go to the root of the veterans care scandal: the ability of wounded soldiers to talk to the press.
Student protestors in Iran were punished by being expelled and drafted into the army.
Faced with an outcry against road taxes based on surveillance,
the UK now proposes: "we won't track which street you are on,
only which part of which city you drive to."
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
That is still too much surveillance.
The US canceled a deal for North Korean nuclear disarmament in 2002
based on an incorrect US assessment of North Korea's nuclear weapons
program.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone makes mistakes, but given Bush's propensity to pressure the CIA to tell him what he wants to hear, I have to wonder whether this was something worse than a mistake.
Israeli troops invading Nablus arrested and brutalized lots of young
men --
without bothering to check who they were.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The raid also seized a tiny quantity of weapons.
Israeli Idan Landau
comments: "We also target civilians".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
16 million Americans now live in severe poverty, and the number is growing rapidly.
These statistics say that extreme poverty increased by 1/5
from 2000 to 2005.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Elephant poaching in Africa, formerly under control, has rebounded to
the point where it threatens the survival of some elephant
populations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Bush plans to make new nuclear warheads, although labeled as "modernization", could encourage other countries to work on them too.
Australian Prime Minister Howard "welcomes" Bush's plan to subject an Australian citizen to an unjust military tribunal.
Which shows how important Australian citizens are in his mind, compared with the US.
A UN ship delivering aid to Somalia has been captured by pirates.
For once, here is an action against piracy which deserves support.
A proposed law in Nigeria would make it a crime to advocate gay rights.
US war resistor Kyle Snyder was
arrested by Canadian police, who said
they were obeying the US Army. He was freed after appeals to the
Canadian government, which had to recognize that the US Army does not
have authority there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Virginia becomes first US state to apologize for slavery.
For Women's Day,
Iraq will execute some women prisoners
who are accused of connection with the resistance.
They were not allowed to have lawyers in their "trials".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
Human Rights Watch has identified 38 prisoners that were held in secret CIA prisons, and are now missing. In effect, the US government has disappeared them.
Disregarding arguments that Lt Watada cannot be prosecuted again on the principle of double jeopardy, the Army intends to try. Meanwhile, other soldiers are imprisoned for refusing to fight for Bush, and 8,000 other soldiers have run away to avoid the evil of fighting in Iraq.
These are the troops that deserve our support.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
The Colombian foreign minister has
resigned due to ties with
paramilitaries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-18 because the old link was broken.]
A Sudanese minister has been named by the ICC as a suspect for massacres in Darfur.
The US message to Sudan is undermined by the US's own example, since the US has pressured many countries to agree to exempt US personnel from the ICC.
The planned British pull-out from Iraq may be a deception, since it depends on conditions that quite likely will not be met.
An Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and President Mubarak.
No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs — and certainly not Islam.
Laura Bush told a whopper even Dubya can't bring himself to say. Just " one bombing a day — this discourages everybody".
Germany has issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents. Next step — figure out who they were.
Given the extent collusion between European goverments and the CIA over this, there may be people in the German government that know the answer.
The
Freedom from Religion Foundation challenges the constitutionality
of Bush's "faith-based initiatives".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think we have an excess of faith-based initiatives in recent years.
Bush has made both legal preparations and rehearsals for establishing martial law in the US-- disguised.
I won't say that nationwide police cooperation to arrest criminal suspects is necessarily unjust, or that there is no possibly use for it. I am skeptical of the article's claim that murder suspects were deliberately "left on the street" to be arrested in this sweep. Before accepting that conclusion, I'd want to see if a large sweep has practical advantages as a means for arresting them.
Nonetheless, the lack of clear information about why these people were arrested makes these FALCON raids are suspect, and need to be investigated to see if it is justified. Were all the people arrested the subject of arrest warrants? How many of them have been charged with crimes? What is the complete breakdown of offenses? If those answers are not forthcoming, that would be a sign of guilt.
Meanwhile, given the legal changes that increased Bush's power, the possibility that this is a rehearsal for martial law, and for mass arrests of dissidents is very threatening, even if these FALCON sweeps did nothing actually wrong.
The US government is supporting terrorists in Iran.
They can't stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but they could create chaos and suffering there.
The suspicious death of Dr. Kelly, who exposed the falsehoods about
Saddam's weapons, was not properly investigated; the B'liar regime assumed it
was suicide, but did not demonstrate this. Many in the UK, including an
investigating opposition MP, have concluded it was murder, but they are
reluctant to consider the suspect with the most obvious motive: the British
government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I do not know who killed Dr. Kelly, but an investigationt hat fails to consider this plausible suspect is a sham investigation.
B'liar has
given in to public pressure to remove British troops slowly
from the Bush forces, while claiming that this is because things are
going so well there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Other countries plan to pull out of the Bush forces too.
The Great Barrier Reef, already in danger from global warming, is being polluted by pesticides.
8 former Black Panthers are being charged with murder
based on confessions extracted through torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A US appeals court has dismissed all the habias corpus lawsuits of Guantanamo prisoners, thus accepting and implementing the official transformation of the US into a state that does not respect the most basic human rights.
The Israeli Supreme Planning Council for occupied Palestine
retroactively legalized a
large construction project on
stolen Palestinian land.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Americans grossly underestimate the number of Iraqis killed by Bush's invasion of Iraq.
The Bush forces shot and killed an Iraqi family that was fleeing from the death squads that the Bush forces unleashed.
Some US generals "will quit" if Bush orders them to attack Iran.
Noam Chomsky analyzes US policy towards Iran, North Korea, South
America, etc. "It all comes down to control".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The
Iraqi government official who wanted to prosecute Shi'ite police
for raping a Sunni woman has been fired.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A human rights activist who investigates corporate abuses in Angola's
oil industry has been
accused of spying.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
She has been released on bail, but the charges are still in effect.
Israeli soldiers and politicians are already talking about "the next war", but not talking about the most likely target -- Iran.
The Japanese whale meat factory ship is sailing away from the penguin rookery that could have been damaged by an oil spill.
The refusal to be towed away by Greenpeace prolonged the danger, unnecessarily.
The UK government has decided to require immigrants to learn English
-- and to cut the funds for the classes to teach them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Many poor countries suffer from deforestation, and planting trees
can be helpful. But tree planting won't make up for the damage done by CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Oral histories given by firefighters provide evidence that the WTC towers were destroyed by explosives planted inside them.
1500 Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners protested in the second
anniversary of the nonviolent movement at Bil'in against the confiscation
of their land by the annexation wall. Soldiers attacked the protestors
and some were seriously injured.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile Israeli soldiers, mistaken for prowlers in a Palestinian
building, shot two Palestinian cops who came to investigate.
One was shot in the back walking to his car.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Two articles explore both sides of one difficult dispute:
about whether Palestinians should have the right to return
to live in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's Iraqi government has almost finished its law to allow foreign oil companies to take over Iraq's oil assets.
The Iraqi Resistance denies the validity of the Iraqi government and all its acts; it will certainly reject this law.
Israel is reportedly asking the US permission for an air attack on Iran.
I think that statement presents the Israel-US relationship in a strange way, as if the desire for an attack came from Israel and the US had to be persuaded to go along. But it does not seem that Bush is reluctant to attack.
The Bush forces raided the union of Iraqi journalists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The EU agreed on a 20% further cut in CO2 emissions, but has not
decided how to achieve this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The fact that the poorer Eastern countries get to count the decreases that have already occurred is probably a good idea, because they are disadvantaged and probably don't make a large fraction of the emissions.
The plan to reduce by 20% unilaterally, and increase it to 30% if the rest of the world joins in, seems wise to me, because that both shows leadership and encourages the rest of the world.
The UN envoy to the Philippines accuses the army of killing many
political activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar is accused of trying to undermine efforts to develop a treaty against cluster bombs.
Australia has decided to ban incandescent bulbs, as a conservation measure. However, they will take 3 years to phase them out.
Fanatical prudes are threatening to cut the funds for a public library unless it imposes complete censorship of porn, even on adults.
The people running this library should say, "Shut us down if you want, but you can't make us endorse your policy."
Saudi Arabia convicted four foreigners of robbery and sentenced them to prison. Then -- surprise -- they were executed.
The trial wasn't fair either.
Almost half of Palestinian families are in danger of being unable to get enough food.
First there was news that a US representative had told the Palestinian
Authority it would continue the boycott against the national unity
government. Then Condoleezza Rice said that this statement was an
erroroneous report.
Then she made the same statement herself.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
What see-saws!
A UN envoy, who is South African and an expert on the apartheid system, is the latest prominent person to point out how the Israeli occupation of Palestine resembles that.
The reason his report may appear to one-sided, paying much less attention to Palestinian violence against Israelis, is that the latter is much less in both quantity and quality, and thus deserves less attention.
Under the harsh, pro-business policies of the UK, a charity finds that many poor people are condemned to a lifetime of debt.
A Muslim fanatic says he assassinated a Pakistani female politician
acting on his religious beliefs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Illegal production of strawberries in part of Spain, using
illegal wells, is drying up the rivers, and
threatens to cause an
irreversible environmental disaster before the shortage of water forces
the growing to stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Greenpeace activists protested the company that makes Kleenex
for cutting virgin forests, which is unsustainable.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Scientists call for an end to government subsidies for unsustainable deep-sea fishing, which uses very destructive methods.
Here's more information on what they destroy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hugo Chavez' program of democratic socialism with human rights,
explained in detail and contrasted with the Bush regime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
More troops are being sent to Afghanistan, but facing a guerilla, it is unlikely to do any good.
UK's police chief calls for prescribing heroin to long-term addicts.
He recognizes that this is the humane way to prevent the crime that
many addicts commit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Allowing heroin addicts to get injected in doctors' offices can lead to big decreases in use of the drug.
The
civil war in Iraq has led to food shortages.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Vermont passed a
resolution calling for withdrawal of the Bush forces
from Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's "Iraqi" police are accused of raping an Iraqi Sunni woman.
This is a step up from what they usually do to Sunnis (kill them).
US legislators and representatives of other major countries reached a tentative agreement on a plan for a CO2-limitation treaty, which could perhaps be adopted once Bush is no longer in a position to interfere.
Will it come in time to save civilization? Or will Bush block the rescue mission until it is too late?
If Bush uses nuclear weapons against Iran, all the current members of
Congress could be held liable by the International Criminal Court, if
they were ever to go to places such as Europe which support the court.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Spring arrived in the UK,
several weeks early.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The corporate empire's economy compared to a tapeworm.
I am not sure whether the suggested measures would be beneficial, or feasible; but the issue is worth thinking about.
Rapidly moving rivers under the antarctic ice could enable the ice to
melt more rapidly than people previously knew-- meaning that
previous estimates of the danger of rising seas are too low.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK is 'one of the most stressed nations in Europe'.
The reason could be that
people there work more hours than anywhere in Europe except Latvia.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The reason for this is almost 30 years of rule by parties that put business above people. (Their justification is a variant of Reagan's "trickle down" theory.)
Bush seems to be ready to attack Iran if he thinks that certain Iranian activities have been proved.
Given Bush's standard of proof, this means he could attack at any moment.
The costs of the Iraq war are deepening the cracks in the US economy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I don't know whether the proposed solutions are good ideas, or whether they would be sufficient to solve this problem.
If we look at the Iraq war merely as a problem for Americans, it might be valid to say that low wages and high debt are a bigger problem. However, that way of looking at the occupation of Iraq misses the main point. The occupation is not merely burdensome, it is a crime.
There reports that major donors are
trying to punish Brandeis University for inviting President Carter to
speak.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian prisoners, imprisoned without trial, are on hunger strike
because they have bad food and no blankets, and forced to urinate in
their clothing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime denies previous reports about rejecting the
Hamas/Fatah unity government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Japanese whaling factory ship caught fire. This will keep the
whales safe whales for a year; but if oil leaks from the the ship, it
could be a disaster for penguins.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Portugal will legalize early abortions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The true cost of cotton includes poisoned farm workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Free trade" treaties are the reason why governments of countries as powerful as India don't dare act to prevent use of these dangerous chemicals.
A new program of cheat
offsetting shows what carbon-offsetting programs can turn into if
you're not careful.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
(This problem of "cheating" has a much better solution: polyamory.)
With the water shortage in Iraq, people have to walk long distances to get water from rivers-- water that can make them sick.
US legislators and representatives of other major countries reached a tentative agreement on a plan for a CO2-limitation treaty, which could perhaps be adopted once Bush is no longer in a position to interfere.
Will it come in time to save civilization? Or will Bush block the rescue mission until it is too late?
A UK court ruled that B'liar's "consultation" about building
additional nuclear power plants was a "sham".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Drug companies have a practice of
paying their competitors not to produce generic drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Once upon a time, this would have been illegal. It should be illegal now.
Most countries don't ask other countries, even former enemies, to recognize "their right to exist". They only ask to be recognized as existing. But Israel makes a special demand of the Palestinians: part of a system of one-sided demands that ensure peace is impossible.
Illegal production of strawberries in part of Spain, using illegal
wells, is drying up the rivers. This threatens to cause an
irreversible environmental disaster long before the shortage of water
forces the growers to stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US House of Representatives adopted a non-binding resolution
against Bush's troop increase in Iraq, and Democrats say binding
measures will follow. This could perhaps lead to an end to the
occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A study found that
nutrients in fish are important for babies. But, thanks to human pollution,
eating fish can poison babies (and adults) with mercury.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If mothers do try to eat more fish, it will speed the depletion of the seas, which is already projected to be nearly complete in a few decades.
Palestinians are trying to resolve the violent dispute between Fatah and Hamas by forming a national unity government, but the Bush regime does not want them to succeed.
The fighting between Fatah and Hamas was provoked by the same outside pressure that is being continued here.
B'liar is dragging the Labour party down in the polls, while the Liberal
Democrats are moving up. But they still have a ways to go to catch up.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Since the UK Labour Party came to power 10 years ago, its policies, friendly to business and rather unfriendly to working people, have increased poverty, especially among children, the old, and the ill.
This is the result of imitating US-style policies, which B'liar loves to do. The US government is like the parents of a dysfunctional family.
Scientists plan to try to preserve hundreds of frog species in
captivity, as a fungus whose growth is boosted by global warming
wipes them out in the wild.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
New Zealand's PM proposes to make the country carbon-neutral, but the plan
uses methods such as biofuels and tree-planting which have their own serious
problems.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Anne Frank and her family were sent to Auschwitz because the US and other
countries wouldn't let them in as refugees.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Today, once again, many refugees fleeing places of great danger can't find a country that will let them in.
A campaign of many MPs and other public figures opposes B'liar's plan to
build expensive new nuclear missile submarines.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ivory Coast made a multinational company pay almost $200 million for
dumping toxic waste. (This happens commonly there.) But the poisoned victims
say that is not enough.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA spoke with Italy's spy chief, in general terms, about the idea
of kidnaping suspects from Italy back in 2001.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The same UK soldiers who in Northern Ireland ran spies in both sides, provoking murders, are now at work in Iraq for the Bush forces.
If they are doing in Iraq what they did in Belfast, Bush nay be more directly responsible for the civil war than we realized.
"Vulture companies" buy up poor country debts that are about to be forgiven, then demand repayment in full.
There is one anomalous point in this article. If governments really want to forgive these debts, why do they agree to sell the debts?
Another point worth noting is that these "debt forgiveness" programs typically impose harsh privatization requirements that keep the country in permanent suffering.
There is very little good about the practice of making loans to poor countries-- it is supposed to enable them to develop, but its real effect is to put them in a permanent trap.
The main cause of these debt traps is the expectation that the exploitative loans will be repayed. Therefore, what really is needed is for debtor countries to start simply canceling their debts. Once rich people learn that by trying to exploit poor countries this way they are likely to lose, they will stop.
A US bill to "protect minors" would ban Wikipedia access
from schools and libraries, as well as making online discussion
forums unfeasible.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
DEA judge calls for government to end obstruction of medical marijuana research.
The DEA prevents any research from being done to study the medical effects of marijuana, by refusing to provide marijuana for studies.
The US prosecutor who has
imprisoned Josh Wolf for six months says he
is a journalist "only in his imagination". Meanwhile, a chapter the
Society of Professional Journalists has named him "journalist of the
year".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US Air Force punished a sergeant for posing nude, removing her from active duty. She responded by resigning from the national guard.
If you want to avoid participating in a criminal war in Iraq, and you are not heroic enough to follow Lt. Watada's path, this is the easy way out!
Bush's top environmental crimes prosecutor got a
juicy reward for
letting a big oil company off the hook.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Isolated instances of corruption happen in every government, but they happen a lot more when the government treats corruption as acceptable starting from the very top.
Sex and torture in America.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A petition against the plan for "road pricing" in UK received over a million signatures in a short time. The arguments presented by the authors included falsehoods such as denial of the danger of CO2 emissions from cars, but also a valid reason: opposition to government surveillance of car travel.
The
UK already does total surveillance of car travel; this wrong must
be corrected. If road pricing based on surveillance is introduced,
ending the surveillance will be impossible.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The right way to discourage driving and reduce CO2 emissions is to increase the gas tax. Each gallon of gas burnt produces approximately the same amount of CO2 regardless of circumstances, so why discourage it more in one place than in another? Of course, the UK should also make trains and buses cheaper and more frequent. Privatization of trains in the UK has backfired, resultingx in trains that are so expensive that people fly instead.
Various religions are starting to recognize the importance of
protecting the environment, and to work with environmental
organizations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Free Software Movement also receives support from some religious people who conclude that forbidding people to share with each other is against their principles.
Forests in Sumatra and Borneo are being cut down illegally
as if there
were no tomorrow. And for orangutans, maybe there isn't one.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Charges were dismissed against some British troops in the Bush forces, who were accused of beating Iraqi prisoners (one of whom died from this). Because they blindfolded the prisoners, the prisoners couldn't identify the soldiers who beat them.
So where does this leave all the Iraqi prisoners that Bush forces soldiers might want to beat in the future?
Google has stopped indexing the uruknet.info site, in effect carrying
out a form of censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Google claims that this is due to some sort of technical problem, but the claim is implausible and seems not to be true anyway.
Google has resumed indexing urknet as a news source.
A
professor at Bowling Green University was harassed by the police for
using a free software browser plug-in, Tor, which blocks some methods
of surveillance of what users browse.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The attitude that merely blocking surveillance is a crime is common among the "security forces" of universities.
I am disappointed with this professor for granting even partial legitimacy to the desire to suppress Tor. No matter what method they use -- just making nasty threats, or by writing a policy against anonymity -- it has to be resisted.
An
ex-CIA-agent is suing the CIA, saying he was fired for reporting
evidence suggesing that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass
destruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I am both shocked and perplexed by the measures to forbid the agent from even identifying himself to the public.
The Bush regime's accusations against Iran have sunk to a new level of absurdity. It says that Iran is supplying the antitank mines used by Sunni resistance groups, counter to all evidence.
To balance the budget,
Bush proposes to cut health care for wounded
soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It often happens that governments spend a lot of money to produce something, then don't bother allocating any to take care of it.
The State of Maine has rejected the US government's Real ID plan
to convert drivers' licenses into national ID cards.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Excessive government power is far more dangerous than terrorists. For more information on the danger of Real ID, see here
The UK arrested a
Muslim leader who called for Muslims in the UK army
to be killed. He also endorsed the standard Muslim policy of killing
anyone who leaves Islam.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This belief shows the basic injustice of Islam as an organized religion, in its current form. In most Muslim countries, rejection of Islam by a Muslim is a capital crime. This offence against religious freedom must be strongly condemned.
Two teenagers in Florida were prosecuted for taking sexy photos of
themselves together. It is legal for them to have sex, but if they
take a picture, that is "child pornography". The judges argued that
they should be punished now because the photos might be released some
day, even if it were against their will.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, this case reveals the dishonesty of the word "child" in the expression "child pornography". When they use that term, they want us to think of 10-year-olds, but then they apply it to sexually mature young adults.
Hamas and Fatah have made a tentative agreement to stop fighting each
other and produce a "national unity" government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The fighting, and the agreement, is a response to the blockade imposed after Palestinian democracy elected Hamas. But Israel is not satisfied with inclusion of Fatah: it demands total surrender by the Palestinians to the occupation.
A real peace must include recognition of Israel, acceptance of all former treaties except as modified, and a clear renunciation by all sides of all terror and violence. A real peace must also include ending the occupation and giving the Palestinians sovereignty over the West Bank and its resources. It is unfair to demand that the Palestinians make all their concessions at the outset, while Israel does not.
The Bush forces say that the Iraqi Resistance is getting its antitank mines from Iran.
These accusations could be true: why shouldn't Iran (or any country) help the Iraqi Resistance kick out the occupying army? (We're not ashamed of the help provided by France to the American Revolution.) They could also be false; we can't trust what Bush says about this.
If Iran is working with the Iraqi Resistance, is it working with Iraqi Shi'ites? That would mean that Iraqi Shi'ites are an important part of the Resistance. Or is Iran helping Iraqi Sunnis? Neither relationship is impossible, but either one would undermine the Bush view of the situation.
The Iraqi resistance has stated terms for peace. They include canceling all the decisions that the Bush regime has imposed on Iraq.
This is a legitimate demand, since such decisions (which include privatization of many state activities, plant patents, and debts, with the theft of Iraq's oil in progress) have no validity when imposed by a conqueror.
However, the fact that Iraq is now effectively divided makes it futile to make peace with the Sunnis alone. Things are much worse in Iraq now than they were 3 years ago.
Monsanto advertised in France that Roundup is biodegradable and safe. It was convicted of false advertising, then fined a trivial amount.
Monsanto will probably tell its ad agencies in other countries, "Go ahead and try it: the worst that can happen is we pay a small fine, and millions of people will still believe what we told them."
Fines need to be millions of euros if they are to succeed in deterring corporate crimes like these.
A DOD report confirms that the Bush regime distorted intelligence reports
in order to fabricate an excuse to attack Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime has accused Iran of aiding in a effective tricky attack on a Bush forces base in Iraq. There is no evidence for this, but Bush wants to prepare excuses to attack Iran. But there is another theory: that the attackers were Americans.
I won't take for granted that the Iraqi resistance lacks the capability to organize such an attack. I also won't assume that the Bush regime has the moral scruples not to attack its own troops. Brzezinsky recently warned Congress that Bush might be planning to do that. (There's also the possibility that the Bush regime participated somehow in the 9/11 attacks.)
The Iraqi government is executing captured members of the resistance as "criminals", after "trials" without defense lawyers.
Do these leaders want to be executed when the resistance captures them?
Italy will try the Bush forces soldier who shot Nicola Calipari
on murder charges.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Here's a good illustration of the kind of society that non-free software (which gives the developer power over the users) leads to.
Prominent nuclear physicists called on the US Congress to pass a law
prohibiting nuclear attacks against countries that do not have nuclear
weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ethiopia, an ally of Bush, is
imprisoning and torturing political
opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Teaching allies to torture is standard US practice since at least the 60s. Maybe the Bush regime taught the Ethiopian government some of the techniques.
Here's
more detail about Lt Watada's mistrial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It seems that prominent authorities on the law agree that he cannot be prosecuted again. But who knows whether the Bush regime will respect the law?
The EU proposes to
establish Europe-wide criminal penalties for
crimes that damage the environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If this is enforced energetically against shipment of waste to the poor countries where a large amount of it now winds up, it could make a big difference.
To demonstrate the absurdity of the main supposed argument against gay marriage, a ballot initiative proposes to annul any marriage that does not produce a child within three years.
In an overpopulated world, the idea that the state has an interest in encouraging births is suicidally insane.
The judge in Lt. Ehren Watada's court martial found he was unable to keep Watada's defense -- that the war is illegal and therefore the order for him to fight is illegal -- from being heard in court. So he found a strained excuse to declare a mistrial. This probably means Watada cannot be prosecuted again, and therefore cannot be convicted. But that would be less of a defeat for the Army than to see him found not guilty.
It is a great victory, but if another officer follows Watada's
in footsteps, the Army will probably find a different legal strategy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
President Chavez was recenly given limited power to decree laws in a certain range of issues. This article explains more about law-decrees in Venezuela. They can be overturned by the legislature or by a referendum, or by the Supreme Court if it finds them unconstitutional.
I am confident that Chavez intends to respect democracy.
Florida proposes to have a voter-verifiable paper ballot for all votes
cast.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This will certainly make things better, but my enthusiasm for a voter-verified paper backup ballot was dimmed by the experiment which found that most people failed to notice that their paper backup ballot didn't match the votes they had cast. Unless we educate voters to pay more attention, we need to have votes cast on paper.
Meanwhile, let's not forget that use of optical scanning machines does not ensure an honest election. Evidence strongly suggests that Bush stole the 2004 election through the rigging of optical scanning vote counting machines in Ohio.
B'liar is accused of sabotaging a UN push to abolish the death
penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Note the British diplomats' half truth: they say they are "skeptical about the resolution's chances of passage". This is dishonest if they are the ones preventing it from passing. But even if it were honest, it would not be a valid reason to oppose the resolution.
Devastating floods made 340,000 people homeless in Jakarta.
They were caused by deforestation of nearby hills, which was done to make houses for the wealthy.
The latest Republican proposal: to make your ISP spy on you for the US government.
Zbigniew Brzezinski told a senate committee that the Bush regime is looking for a provocation to excuse attacking Iran, to carry out its "self-fulfilling prophecy" of such a war.
He also condemned the Iraq war as morally wrong.
The Australian government attacked concert organizers who tried to restrain hooligans, because the hooligans literally draped themselves in the Australian flag. The opposition, and mass media joined in the attack.
The concert organizers made a mistake by going on the defensive. They should have accused Prime Minister Howard of supporting hooliganism.
Tens of thousands marched in Oaxaca demanding the resignation of the
governor, accusing him of stealing the election.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In late 2006, the governor crushed massive protests, arresting large
numbers of people and torturing some. Others seem to have been
"disappeared".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
But this did not put an end to the movement.
I suppose Bush would also respond to massive protests by arrests, torture and disappearace. But people in the US have not shown the courage in defense of their democracy that we have seen in Mexico.
Professor Yayla job in Turkey criticized some of the ideas of Mustafa
Kemal, founder of modern Turkey. For this, people called him a
traitor, and he was fired.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Academics in the US have been punished for their views in recent years, too. This is equally wrong in any country.
The Indian Young Publisher award was given to a publisher who focuses on
issues of caste.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dr. Ambedkar's Navayana form of Buddhism is a rationalist form, with the spiritualist aspects removed.
Amnesty International is concerned about the
torture of a conscientious objector in Turkey.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
On Feb 7 there were protests in many countries against the UN troops that control Haiti.
This article also explains why.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Soldiers of the Bush forces, in the "Iraqi" army,
kidnaped an Iranian
diplomat, then released him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime could have ordered it as part of their campaign against Iran, denying it afterward. Or perhaps these soldiers were working on some other account.
Spain arrested 18 people just for belonging to a group that had
recently been declared "terrorist". Apparently there is no need for
them to be personally connected with any crime in order to be
convicted and punished.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Spain as in the US, this practice constitutes guilt by association -- which is unjust use of government power. ETA bombings are injustices, but that doesn't legitimize government injustices.
(I am not a supporter of Basque independence; treating people this way is wrong no matter what cause they support.)
Bush is quietly pushing the construction of a hundred new coal-burning
electric plants. If they are built, there is little hope of reducing
US CO2 emissions. And it's totally unnecessary, since Greenpeace
shows how the US could cut emissions drastically by building windmill
farms and requiring cars to be more efficient.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Car company lobbies made the EU water down its CO2 emissions limits.
In order for governments to get serious about preventing climate disaster, or protecting freedom, or reducing poverty, or anything except pandering to business, they must have the strength to tell business lobbyists to buzz off: "What you say is surely only half true, and you are not very important anyway."
Note how the car companies blocked the previous effort by agreeing to "voluntary standards", which they then ignored. Business always proposed voluntary standards as a compromise because it can ignore them, so that is really just a way for business to deflect the pressure for regulation. A government which is serious about achieving a goal will respond to such a proposal by saying, "Business can't be trusted to keep voluntary standards. We'll make mandatory standards, and avoid an unnecessary risk."
You may have read that President Chavez convinced Congress to give him the power to "legislate by decree". The story is true, but only partly; this is limited to a few specific areas.
I find this somewhat disturbing, because bypassing constitutional procedures is generally worrisome, and because I don't see why it should be necessary. However, these areas are not the ones that are significant in terms of human rights, so I don't think this is outright bad. I will wait and see what laws he makes this way before I criticize.
China is planning to build an arcology powered by renewable energy that could house, employ and feed half a million people.
Steve Jobs called on the record companies to end use of DRM.
Here is his actual article.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The article pleads for us not to hold Apple responsible for iTunes' DRM. However, nobody held a gun to Jobs' head to make Apple implement iTunes; he and Apple cannot evade responsibility for what they did. The article also insults people who share by calling them "pirates" and calls sharing "stealing".
Nonetheless, this article may help in the pressure to abolish DRM.
Iran is about to announce increased production of weapons-grade uranium -- partly as bluff; some experts say it will need years to really produce enough for weapons.
I do not believe Iran's claims that this is meant for peaceful uses; they do face an oil crisis in the future, but if they only wanted nuclear power plants, they could get them without this confrontation. However, I would be more inclined to regard Iran as a particular menace if the nuclear-armed US were not so aggressive, and more inclined to blame Iran if the US had not made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only way for other countries to protect themselves from US attack.
Disposable clothing boosts pollution both before and after it is worn.
Iraqis fleeing the murder in Iraq can find refuge in Syria, but Palestinians fleeing Iraq are stuck in a camp at the border.
In order to support the official pretense that Afghanistan was a safe place, UK officials denied asylum to a refugee who said he and his family faced the threat of murder there. They deported him, and sure enough, he was murdered.
The B'liar regime, like many, is more interested in creating an appearance of validity for its lies, than with what they do to people.
The Conservatives say they will scrap the B'liar's ID card plan if they are elected. They are trying to scuttle the scheme even sooner by scaring companies off of bidding to implement the scheme.
This approach should be applied to "free trade" treaties too.
Fatah and Hamas are meeting in a last-ditch chance to avoid a Palestinian civil war.
The conflict between them is the result of the Israeli blockade and financial embargo. I would guess that many in the Israeli government are hoping that civil war does break out among Palestinians. But I think that if it does, they will eventually regret it.
A Citizens' Hearing presented the
evidence that Lt. Ehren Watada was
forbidden to present at his trial -- which would appear not to be much
of a trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Senate Republicans prevented any debate about Bush's plans to send more troops to the Bush forces.
Many US cities are passing laws making it
a crime to feed homeless people. Politicians feel these unsightly
nuisances belong in the cemetery.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UN denies its troops in Haiti fired at shantytowns from
helicopters, inevitably killing bystanders, but the roof damage seems
to prove they did.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Labour MP writes that he is ashamed to be a Labour MP, after he was unable to stop a family of Pakistani refugees from being callously deported from the UK.
The minister who deported them, trying to look tough on immigration, considered the case in such a cursory fashion that he never had the evidence the family offered, as proof that their lives would be in danger in Pakistan, translated into English.
The new unit of Guantanamo prison is even harsher-- solitary
confinement for everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime, as usual, lies about it. Prisoners should just love this new prison.
The UK plans to teach all school students about global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, the focus on what individuals can do-- supposing they pay constant attention and that their work pressures allow them time to do so-- could be an excuse not to do what is really needed to limit global warming: firm and effective goverment policies.
It looks like the Iraqi resistance has found a new way to shoot down Bush forces helicopters.
The 200 or so pilgrims that the Bush forces killed-- and then claimed
were terrorists-- were reportedly part of a group of Shi'ites that
want to stand with the Iraqi Sunnis against the Bush forces, rather
than with the Shi'ites that are slaughtering Sunnis, who control the
"Iraqi" government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
So maybe the "Iraqi" government was being murderously rational in killing them.
There are now
over 140,000 street children in Jakarta.
Many poor people can't afford to care for their children.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The best way to avoid this sort of problem is to help (and convince) people to have fewer children.
The B'liar regime is using recent police raids as an opportunity to demand imprisonment of suspects for 90 days, even though these raids have nothing to do with such a policy.
Note the argument that "we can imagine circumstances in which this power would be needed." Any conceivable proposed government power could have such a "justification" -- therefore, if we value any kind of freedom at all, we must conclude that such we-can-imagine "justifications" are not sufficient reason to abolish a freedom.
The people who opposed the invasion of Iraq are
now seen to have been
right, but they cannot take much pleasure in it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The most noteworthy point in this article is actually the details of the pressure that was put on some of these people to lie and support Bush. That is fundamental corruption of the political system, waiting to be used by any dishonest president for any purpose.
Congress is starting to document Bush's record of gagging US scientists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Seclists.org, which archives various security-related mailing lists, was shut down by its domain registrar on request from MySpace.com. Neither MySpace.com nor the registrar bothered to talk with the maintainers of Seclists.org before they did this.
The Brookings institute says that the Bush forces must
give up on
trying to control Iraq's cities, and invite Syria and Iran to help
reestablish order and end the civil war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
That resembles what I've been saying here.
German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for the CIA kidnap team that
seized a German citizen in Macedonia and imprisoned him in Albania.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
They ought to include the former head of the CIA, who must have authorized this.
The "Vishnu Strategy":
persistent massive use of armed force, which
breeds the hatred that eventually defeats it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I'm told that the writer has misunderstood the Hindu conception of Vishnu, and that the proper translation of that part of the Bhagavad-Gita is "I am Time, that comes to destroy worlds", the point being that everyone Arjuna fights in the coming battle is going to die sooner or later anyway. I wouldn't consider that alone a justification for war, but the point is that people shouldn't take this article as a lesson about Vishnu. It is nonetheless interesting for what it says about Bush.
The net is
closing around B'liar's lieutenants who offered honors
in return for contributions to the Labor party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Novartis and other drug companies are pursuing a
campaign of mass
murder, through a lawsuit in an Indian court that attempts to change
Indian patent law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
When people die because the WTO made medicine too expensive for them, their tombstones should say, "Patented to death by the WTO." This is what the world needs to generate, over time, the movement that will destroy the WTO.
The WTO deserves to be destroyed because it subordinates democracy to the unjust power of business.
The destruction of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia has brought back to Mogadishu the chaos and violence that existed before the ICU.
The contents of "bin Laden tapes" has repeatedly produced suspicion that they are made by someone working for the Bush regime (who may or may not be Osama bin Laden). The statement connecting Somalia to al Qa'ida is consistent with that theory -- if the Bush regime wanted to intervene there, this gave them a fine excuse.
What shall we call Gordon Brown?
Gordon Brown has already made it clear that, if he replaces Tony Blair, he will continue Blair's attacks against the Rights of Englishmen. Therefore, he will deserve to be the object of derision and disgust.
But the name "B'liar" won't fit him. So what should we call him? "Frown"? "Clown"? "Drown"? Something else?
Please email your suggestions to rms at the site gnu followed by a period and orgy without the y.
B'liar blocked the Italian initiative for the EU to take a stand against the death penalty world-wide. The reason given: to pander to the US.
Shame on the UK, and shame on the US.
The Bush forces say they suspect two Iraqi generals helped plan a Jan 20 attack by resistance fighters disguised as Bush forces.
If this is true, those generals are secretly loyal to their country, even as they appear to collaborate with the occupation. And they are far from alone.
An UK parliament report on poverty urges a new focus on helping poor countries reduce population growth.
I disagree with those that object to China's birth limitation policy: it is both necessary and justified. To say to a person "have as many children as you want" is tantamount to saying "50 years from now, take for your descendants as much land, as much water, as much gasoline, as much of everything as you want". Both are equally unsustainable.
In some countries the birth rate has decreased to the point where there is no problem of population growth. In some countries, providing free contraception would suffice to solve the problem. We should do this, of course. But if in some places that doesn't solve the problem, we must still curb that growth somehow, and letting it be done by starvation and disease is not humane.
Canada's depository library now requires submission of electronic works -- copies sans DRM.
Major US companies CEOs called for a cap on carbon emissions -- in
other words, serious efforts to restrain global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The CEOs' goal is probably long-term economic growth. That's not a very good goal, since it gives no direct value to ending poverty. But the contrast with the Bush regime's policy shows that the regime has much worse values. The Bush regime has the attitude of a looter.
The Middle East's military tensions
block observers from studying the
environmental condition of the Jordan River, but the parts they can
see have almost no water in them. And they are so polluted that they
are dangerous to visit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hamas and Fatah are battling openly in Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US criticized Israel for using cluster bombs in populated areas.
So we cannot say that Bush regime has made the US do bad things 100% of the time. But it comes pretty close.
The Bush forces wiped out a group of Iraqis on pilgrimage, more than 200 people, after a fight that started by accident.
Like any tyrant, Bush would rather lie to accuse others than admit his own mistake. So the Bush forces called the pilgrims "terrorists", and called the fight a great victory.
B'liar personally intervened to divert aid funds for African children
into buying an unneeded radar system.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The radar was made by a British company that B'liar persistently operates to support.
The campaign for a world boycott of the Israeli Medical Association
and other Israeli
medical organizations that support the occupation of
Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is firing effective federal prosecutors
and replacing them with
inexperienced political hit-men -- probably so as to stop them from
exposing and prosecuting corruption that Bush encourages.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK's prisons are full to capacity, but there's
still room for a
peace protestor who refuses on principle to pay a fine for protesting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Soldiers in Guinea
shot protestors as a general strike calls for the
ouster of the president. They also arrested the leaders of the unions
that organized the strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This article seems to want to give the feeling that the violence was mutual, but the another article, for which I don't have a usable URL, says that the killing was done by soldiers to protestors.
An ice shelf disintegrating due to global warming has produced a giant iceberg the size of a city.
At least this problem won't get worse and worse. In a few decades, there won't be any ice shelves left.
Dishonests presidents, such as Nixon and Bush, pretend to be the "commander in chief" of all Americans.
In fact the president is the commander in chief only of the armed forces.
WTO negotiations on a revised "free trade" treaty, which appeared to
have collapsed, are being reopened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Free trade" treaties are inimical to democracy because they transfer power from states to big business. Some of these treaties attack democracy explicitly, by requiring states to pay for the privilege of regulating business. All attack democracy implicitly, by making it easier for businesses to tell states, "If you dare to regulate us, we will simply move."
Encouraging international trade is beneficial only so long as democracy is not weakened, but weakening democracy is exactly what businesses want. Thus, there is no practical prospect of a "free trade" treaty which isn't a threat to the public good. All the existing free trade treaties should be abolished because of the harm they do to democracy.
Disposable clothing threatens to boost pollution, both while it is made,
and after it is thrown away.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush ignored Congress and sent more troops to the Bush
forces. The result is that a lot of them are being killed,
along with a lot of Iraqis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces say they killed some 200 members of an Iraqi cult group that was planning to attack a religious festival.
It could be true, but I don't trust the Bush regime enough to take its word for any of the facts that cannot be verified.
Thailand decided to produce cheap generic versions of some life-saving medicines.
This exercizes a clause in the TRIPES agreement that the US keeps trying to pressure poor countries not to use.
Violence and division continue to increase in Baghdad, and
the rest of Iraq, making Bush's supposed "strategy" absurd.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Litvinenko killer 'will die of poisoning within three years'.
Is that a clever move by the organizers of the killing, to get rid of the killer as a possible witness? Will the killer confess to get revenge on them?
Millions of tons of waste from rich countries are disposed of in China, where poor people sort through it by hand and get sick from it.
Russia has banned two human rights organizations which have helped Chechens publicize and go to court about Russian atrocities in Chechnya.
The practice of banning organizations arbitrarily has been championed by the US and its allies, and has been extended by them to the UN level.
Under NAFTA,
Mexico has become dependent on corn from the US. The
increase in corn prices due to turning corn into ethanol has created a
food crisis there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Biofuel is no solution to the problem of oil if it competes with food for humans. Only if made from waste plant material (which is not yet feasible) can it be a substantial renewable energy source.
Ecuador is going to sue Colombia in the World Court for US-backed
drug-eradication spraying, which damages crops and people's health
in Ecuador.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Maryam Ibrahim, 8 years old is in prison in Texas, as is the rest of
her family. They came to the US legally and asked for asylum.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinian peace activist whose 11-year-old daughter
was murdered by the Border Police still wants peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush wants to win the occupation of Iraq by
killing Iranians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If the Bush forces start killing Iranians in Iraq, they will start hiding better. A few will be killed nonetheless, but it won't change anything directly. However, it will create an appearance of activity, escalate the tension with Iran, and provide a lever to manipulate Americans. I think that is what Bush wants.
Some senators think
this is leading to an attack against Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Recent announcements suggest that maybe Israel will make that attack.
I would feel more sympathy for Israel's view of this situation if it were not involved in a system of oppression that makes Iran look like paradise.
Officially, some 3,000 Bush forces soldiers have been killed by the resistance. But that only counts official soldiers. Some 48,000 mercenaries fighting as well, but the casualty figures do not count them.
Carl Bernstein: Bush Administration has done
"Far Greater Damage" than Nixon.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces are attacking in many Iraqi cities, and rampaging against civilians too.
When Shi'ite and Sunni students started shooting at each other in
Beirut,
the army could not decide what to do.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Publishers of restricted-access scientific journals have hired a
PR agent to attack the open access movement. The agent previously worked
to deny global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The people operating a medical-marijuana operation in Canada, who funded it through voluntary donations, were prosecuted and accused of distributing the marijuana commercially.
Prosecutor Lindley's quote is a vicious act of misrepresentation. The evidence which supposedly shows this was commercial actually proves just the opposite, when carefully considered. It confirms that the recipients of the marijuana were not charged any price: when some sent money, that was a voluntary donation. But Lindley takes the fact that many chose to donate as a sign of evil.
I wonder what Lindley would do if she suffered from a disease and the only drug that provided relief were illegal.
The European Parliament's
investigation of US kidnapings in Europe denounced government ministers of
various European countries for refusing to cooperate with the investigation,
and says they surely knew about these crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
After 9/11, some
Muslim immigrants in the US were arrested on vague suspicions and kept in
jail for a long time; while there, they were mistreated and beaten and labeled
as "terrorists". Now some have gone to court about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush, forced to admit that global warming is an issue, continues
trying to block real remedies. His "solution" calls for a small
reduction in oil use over a long period of time, to be achieved by
biofuels--
thus avoiding real solutions that would burn less.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's plan may actually cause harm.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A soldier who killed some Iraqi prisoners has been convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The Army is doing the right thing in this case, but it is a rare exception. Even the killing of prisoners is punished only occasionally. Killing unarmed Iraqis who are not prisoners happens all the time. When soldiers do this intentionally, usually it is not punished. Even more often, jumpy soldiers shoot unarmed Iraqis out of fear they might be attackers. This is not considered a crime on the part of those soldiers, but it is part of the crime that Bush committed.
Protests sparked riots in Lebanon, threatening a reignition of the
civil war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is worth noting that it was not the Hezbollah people that started the violence.
Brian Haw won a victory in court to continue his 6-year protest in front of Parliament.
B'liar passed a law specifically to stop this protest; that shows how much it stung him, and how little regard he has for democracy.
The world's leading climate experts now predict that global warming will do even more harm than previously estimated.
In Kabul, the poverty is so great that people regularly die from the cold.
Nepal has been pressured to privatize the water supply.
Resistance is beginning.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A joint Israeli-Palestinian protest made the Israeli government back off its latest plan to restrict Palestinians; the prohibition on Palestinians' riding in Israeli's cars.
More generally,
this article says how the Israeli rule of Palestine
resembles South African apartheid, and how it differs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explains why
it has moved the doomsday clock up to 5 minutes to midnight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A list of what Israeli troops do to Palestinians
when not shooting at them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya's plans to attack Iran amount to a major war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi resistance says that Bush force soldiers shot a 16-year-old Iraqi for spitting at them.
Bush should teach his soldiers to say: IEDs can break my knees, but spit will never harm me!
The second looting of New Orleans.
We need to help rebuild New Orleans, but not in the same place! That is asking for it to be drowned again. Even the parts that aren't below sea level now will be below sea level in a few decades. If we don't to take advantage of this opportunity to move the city to higher ground, we will all regret it later.
Bush admits his occupation of Iraq is a "slow failure", but as always
he insists on continuing it. Democrats are trying to end the
occupation -- slowly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Somalia, the guerrilla resistance of the Islamic Courts has begun.
It looks like Iraq all over again, except that Ethiopia has already
said it will not keep troops there for long.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors say that
Iraqi children are dying by the hundreds, and the US
and UK are responsible, since the invasion and occupation of Iraq
caused these deaths.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Carbon offsetting" can ease people's consciences without reducing CO2
emissions. "Offset" plans based on tree planting are especially
ineffective.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Former Israeli justice minister Lapid recognized the parallel
between the Israeli treatment of (some) Palestinians in Hebron
and the widespread antisemitism of the pre-WWII world.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Peace Now tried to protest there, but the protestors were blocked.
The police seem quite capable of restricting Israelis who stand for
human rights. It's only the bigots bent on ethnic cleansing that they
can't stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Stephen Hawking warns that climate change is nearly as dangerous
as the possibility of nuclear war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US Congress is trying to make all Internet sites censor all
postings by "sex offenders" (a category which includes people
convicted of skinny-dipping). If a site fails to do this, the
operators would be fined. Many sites sites would have to close
rather than run such a risk.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In around 15 years, due to global warming, Snowdon won't have any snow. All the snow-covered mountains of England and Wales are losing their snow.
The UK's latest Big Brother proposal: a single combined data base with
all the government's information about everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
UK scientists accused B'liar of manipulating a scientific committee
report about nuclear waste, so as to facilitate his plan to build new
nuclear plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The B'liar regime plans another attack on human rights: many
kinds of administrative punishment without a trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
One of B'liar's men condemned the Law Lords for standing up
for human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
On the run with the Karen people forced to flee Burma's genocide.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Rioting Israeli soldiers, firing indiscriminately, killed 10-year-old
Abir Aramin who had just stepped out of school.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Iraq's refugee nightmare: 1/6 of all Iraqis have fled their homes, but it is increasingly hard for them to get into any other country.
Prominent doctors say that Iraqi children are dying by the hundreds, and the US and UK are responsible -- since the invasion and occupation of Iraq caused these deaths.
The ACLU has shown that the US military has tracked at least 186 anti-military protests in recent years. And that is just the beginning of unjust government surveillance.
Atheist Richard Dawkins on 'The God Delusion'.
Please don't accept the invitation to post your statements of Atheism (or anything) on YouTube.com. That site is designed so as to require proprietary software (the Flash player) in order to view anything. If you want to post a video, post an Ogg Theora file on your own site.
Hrant Dink, a Armenian-Turkish editor who was convicted of "insulting Turkish identity" for writing about the genocide of the Armenians, has been assassinated.
Turkey has imprisoned conscientious objector Halil Savda. Turkey does not recognize any right to conscientious objection.
Secret unofficial peace talks between Israel and Syria, carried out
with the Israeli government's knowledge, considered ways to return the
Golan Heights to Syria and ensure security. The proposed draft would
have had Syria stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Israel, the president, the prime minister, and the finance minister
all face possible prosecution. And Defense Minister Chalutz has
resigned, taking responsibility for the "failure" of the invasion of
Lebanon (but not for its inexcusable attacks on civilians and their
infrastructure).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I believe it was Chalutz who, when asked what he feels when he drops a bomb from a plane, replied "a little bump".
Henry Siegman, the former head of American Jewish Congress, defends
Jimmy Carter's new book and writes about how Israeli
governments have killed the peace prospects.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Taliban raids into Afghanistan have tripled in certain parts of the Pakistani border.
The US Congress is considering a law to prohibit Bush from attacking Iran.
This law could actually be adopted, if it were included in another law that Bush couldn't afford to veto.
I've posted several warnings that an attack on Iran was under immediate consideration, but no such attack has occurred. Perhaps all Bush wanted to do was generate anxiety and keep people off guard.
Iran says it is willing to help train "Iraqi security forces" so that the foreign occupying troops will leave Iraq.
Perhaps Iran is already helping to train them. Iran has been accused of supporting Shi'ite militias, many of whom are members of the "Iraqi police" and run death squads that kill Sunnis.
Nonetheless, open Iranian help could be useful for ending the violence, if some other country (a Sunni Arab country perhaps) could help the Sunnis defend themselves from the Shi'ites.
Global warming has disrupted salmon's mating cycle in Scotland.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In a further attack on freedom of speech, Germany wants to make "holocaust denial" a crime in the whole EU.
Denying the holocaust is a falsehood, but political and historical positions must not be censored merely because they are wrong.
Israelis for peace plan a "Freedom Ride": they will defy the law that
prohibits them from carrying Palestinian passengers in their cars in
Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Malian film puts West's blueprint for Africa on trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
BearingPoint, the company that wrote the Iraqi law to enable Bush's cronies to run off with Iraq's oil wealth, has a long history of inside connections with the Bush regime, and a long history of not accounting for what it does with the money that the Bush regime pays it.
A New York Times columnist calls Bush "defeated", and calls on
Republicans to save the additional lives that Bush's troop increase
would destroy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Before we start to crow about Dubya's possible defeat, we must remind ourselves that ending his war will not restore human rights in the US. To make the US once again a country that deserves to be admired or supported, there is a long way to go, and most US politicians are against it.
Paul Krugman says Bush's continued pursuit of his war for Iraq is a
matter of looting, and compares it to the deceptive operation of a
bank that seeks new depositors after it is already broke.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
An article in the Atlantic claims that Bush personally believes his
lies, because he has disconnected himself from reality. That could be
the explanation for why he persists in all these lies even after they
are disproved.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If Bush wants to believe that Saddam Hussein possesses banned weapons, and pressures the CIA until it fabricates evidence for this, whereupon Bush cites the CIA's evidence, then Bush has not lied -- not exactly. Rather, he has made the government as a system lie on his behalf. Since he is in charge of that system, he is just as responsible for this as he would be for lying personally.
John Murtha, proposing to forbid Bush from sending more troops to Iraq, said on mainstream media: "The invasion itself is what causes the sectarian violence. It's the occupation [that] causes the violence."
I'm really glad that the wall forbidding people to say that the war is wrong has been punctured.
Greg Palast says: instead of letting Bush have one more fix of troops, ask Saudi Arabia and Iran to work out peace in Iraq.
I have recommended similar things.
There is a disease alert in Baghdad because the sewage system has been
overwhelmed. The tap water is now sewage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's attacks on infrastructure, and the violence that his occupation unleashed, set the stage for problems like these.
Indian Prime Minister Singh compared the caste system to the former apartheid regime.
A Bush regime official called for a
boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo prisoners. In effect, he is
trying to deny them the possibility of legal representation by sabotaging what
remains of the US system of justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Although other Bush regime officials did not support this plan, the fact that it was proposed at all reflects the Bush regime's climate of opposition towards the very idea of the rights of the accused.
Some UK MPs demand that
MI5 account for its role in sending two UK residents to Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A new film tells about the
cruel and deadly mistreatment of Canadian indigenous children carried out by
the United Church in Canada, and how it punished minister Kevin Annett for
exposing what was done.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
11,000 Palestinians who are political prisoners of Israel are on a hunger strike as a protest against the fighting between Hamas and Fatah.
UN officials denounced the execution of Saddam Hussein's lieutenants,
and the injustice of their trials.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime seems to be trying to open the door for the US Army to
spy on Americans with no supervision or restraint.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hamas took a step towards recognizing Israel's existence, at least as
a fact that is not expected to change.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Two journalists in Morocco were convicted of insulting Islam and the king, demonstrating the lack of freedom of speech there.
Does Morocco allow access to the Jesus and Mo webcomic?
"Surgical" air attacks in Somalia did not hit their targets, but they killed plenty of others. Tell us, Dr Bush, can their relatives sue for malpractice?
Protestors in Bangladesh achieved their goal:
a postponement of the
elections, giving time to produce a correct voters' list.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Contrast this with the Bush's theft of the 2000 election--by excluding some 50,000 mostly-Black, mostly Democratic voters from the Florida voters' list.
Police in Berlin raided a center organizing protests against the G-8 meeting -- before the protest started.
Robert Fisk: Bush's new strategy --
the march of folly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Union of Concerned Scientists has
decided to move the Doomsday
Clock closer to midnight, reflecting an estimate of increased danger
of nuclear war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
NGOs in Niger are going to sue the US for Dubya's
false claims about
selling uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush got an unenthusiastic response from troops he was sending to fight in Iraq, so they were prohibited from speaking to reporters afterward.
Venezuela's president
Chavez says he will re-nationalize energy and
telephone companies that were privatized by a previous government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It makes no sense to privatize state operations that do not operate in competitive markets.
Even Republicans in Congress are rejecting Bush's plan to send more
troops to Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, what Senator Hagel said is absurd. The "mistake" of continuing the war is not bigger than the "mistake" of starting it in the first place -- and calling them "mistakes" is whitewashing a crime.
Arabs sometimes maintain family feuds for hundreds of years after
forgetting the reason. Perhaps the fighting between Sunnis and
Shi'ites in Iraq has taken on the aspect of a feud. If so, it would
be very difficult to settle even if the underlying causes are removed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Imad Kabir, Egyptian, objected to how a policeman was treating his cousin. The policeman in response sodomized him with his stick. Kabir complained, so he has been imprisoned for "resisting authority".
Police around the world think that their weapons entitle them to brutalize people and make false accusations against them.
Dubya's attacks against "al Qa'ida leaders" in Somalia seem to have killed mainly bystanders. The intended targets may not have even been there.
As usual, the US attacking based on untrustworthy information that it buys, and the victims are innocent people, like most of the Guantanamo prisoners. And, as usual, the US never admits any mistake.
After five years, the Guantanamo prison continues to symbolize the evil of the Bush regime for the whole world.
Guantanamo is not the only place where the US practices contempt for human rights. It has disappeared thousands of people, who may be held in secret prisons, or may be dead. Thus, closing Guantanamo is just the first step of what the US must to to rejoin the society of civilized states.
The
wealthiest parts of the world cause global warming, but the
burdens fall mainly on the poor.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Fredy Muñoz, reporter for Telesur in Colombia, has been released from
prison, but still faces trumped-up criminal charges. They are based
on accusations by other prisoners, who say that the police leaned on them to
inculpate Muñoz.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Muñoz now fears he will be murdered, as has happened to other political prisoners in Colombia.
B'liar's most flagrant attack yet on political freedom in the UK is a proposal to arrest protestors for "offensive" chanting and signs.
Shahawar Matin Siraj has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for
expressing willingness to participate in a theoretical bombing plot
that was suggested to him by an undercover police agent. Shahawar,
who is somewhat retarded, was arrested shortly after telling the
police agent that he had moral doubts about the plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
What we see is that Americans are so hungry for victims that they will shred all kinds of legal protection in order to get their hands on someone on whom to vent their rage.
A Pentagon memo predicts 10,000 or more Americans in the Bush Forces could be killed in Iraq by 2008.
Since hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have already been killed due to Bush's occupation, it is likely that hundreds of thousands more will be killed by 2008.
The UK proposes banning the use of animal egg cells to produce human stem cells, apparently for purely irrational reasons.
The Democrats' new ethics rules have potential loopholes that could undermine them completely if they are not enforced very carefully.
An EU report says that climate change will transform Europe
disastrously. The Mediterranean will become so hot and dry that
people will not want to live there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar, refusing to act to reduce CO2 emissions, ducks the issue by saying that no politician would "ban" cheap flights.
Of course, the idea is not to "ban" them, just to tax them enough that they won't be so cheap.
Judge Jose Martinez, who has
protected Coca Cola Company from lawsuits
for its murders in Colombia, does fund-raising for the University of
Miami, and the big donor is the Coca Cola Company.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US is spending billions on future weapons. Some don't work at all. Some do work, but they are only necessary to fight previous generations of US weapons. Some might give the US power that no country should be allowed to have.
As Bush talks about sending more troops to Iraq, the UK says it will
cut troops in Iraq by almost half, by May.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
One unjust and unwinnable war in Iraq isn't enough for Bush. He now threatens to include Syria and Iran.
The Bush forces attacked an Iranian consulate in the Kurdish part of Iraq, arresting its staff.
I've heard elsewhere that this angered the Kurds, as well as Iran.
A campaign of tent cities focused French politicians' attention on the problem of homelessness, and made them take action.
Contrast this with the total callousness of US politicians towards the homeless.
1,000 people gathered on the beach in Pelosi's home district to spell out "Impeach".
The UK is letting train fares rise to the point where they drive
passengers to fly instead.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If they keep this up, the problem will correct itself when London disappears beneath the rising North Sea.
Bush will propose sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq,
plus adding a billion dollars to the billions that were frittered
away ineffectively on "reconstruction".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
As a plan to "win the war", it is hopeless, but it can serve for Bush's real aim, which is to continue the occupation and not admit defeat.
Direct
US intervention in Somalia could give Islamists a boost for
starting the guerrilla war that they have threatened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces soldier who lead the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family was previously diagnosed by a medical team as a homicidal threat. The Bush forces often send such soldiers back into combat, because they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for more troops.
Another Bush forces soldier who shot and killed several helpless prisoners was sentenced to 9 months in jail.
I would suppose that the murdered Iraqis' families do not think justice was done.
Producing ethanol for cars from corn could lead to a worldwide rise in
corn prices.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This would be good for farmers in poor countries; they might be able to compete. But in the long run we cannot afford to make car fuel the way we grow food-- it is too resource-intensive. Biomass fuel will only be a solution if it is made from weeds.
The Bush forces arrested journalists who covered a march that protested the execution of Saddam Hussein, as well as dozens of the protestors. (Search for "reporter".)
That's the sort of "freedom and democracy" that Bush has brought to Iraq.
Segolene Royal, candidate for President of France, took China to task
for its mounting inequality and its disregard for human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Remember when US leaders used to try to put pressure on China about this? Then they decided that copyright enforcement was more important.
The US is steadily increasing its spying into the lives of everyone that visits the US. Next step: taking all 10 fingerprints. This is in addition to reading your email.
If you don't want to feed Big Brother, stay away from the US. Spend your money elsewhere!
French President Chirac told the Bush regime, "I told you so."
He opposed the invasion of Iraq, and called for restoring "full
sovereignty" to the Iraqi people.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Full sovereignty would mean that Iraqis would be free to cancel the theft of Iraq's oil resouces, the imposition of plant patents, and other privatizations.
Two US senators wrote an
open letter to Exxon-Mobil, calling on the
company to end its support for global warming denial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
India's prime minister made a strong speech in favor of energy
conservation, calling on India to do more, and condemning the West for
failing to conserve.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Iowa plans to build a 300 MW wind-power storage facility.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Piergiorgio Welby, paralyzed by muscular dystrophy, was condemned to a life of torture by the Italian state. He begged to die; he went to court, but it did not recognize his right to end his torture. Doctor Riccio defied the court and disconnected his respirator, letting him die.
I've read elsewhere that the doctor now faces criminal charges for his act of compassion.
The right to end one's life must not be limited to the "terminally ill". Mr Welby was not "terminally ill", which means his torture could have lasted decades if he had not received help.
Bush is about to achieve his goal from the invasion of Iraq: transferring Iraq's oil to his backers' oil companies.
An Iraqi expatriate who opposed Saddam Hussein condemns the Bush
forces and supports the Iraqi resistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A proposal for how to remove the Bush forces from Iraq and protect
Iraqi civilians: give them a safe place to flee to.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The State of New Jersey is
leaning towards abolishing the death penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A newspaper reports receiving secret Israeli plans for a nuclear attack against Iran.
Hurricane Katrina killed 1300 people.
A hurricane striking South Florida could kill more than 10,000-- but
nobody is planning for this. Nor is there planning for how to make New
Orleans safer.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
New Orleans is a great city and we should not let it die. But it can only survive, for more than a few decades, if it is moved.
In support of Bush's War on Integrity, many government agencies in the
Bush regime are firing or sabotaging their own anticorruption
inspectors.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This reflects is a general Bush policy in favor of corruption.
Bush forces Marines took lots of photos of the murders that some of them committed in Haditha, Iraq.
The US is developing germ warfare technology in corporate and
university labs, and maintain illegal secrecy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Agribusiness funding of nutritional studies corrupts the results.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
For full details, here is the study.
Entire towns in Alaska have to move because of global warming. The erosion is also filling up rivers, wiping out the salmon that spawn in them.
The opposition in Bangladesh plans to boycott the election, saying it
is being rigged.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is a health warning over safety of bottled water in the UK.
(And often it doesn't even taste any better.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
People have been manipulated into assuming bottled water is somehow better, just because they have to pay for it.
A former minister in the "Iraqi" government has proposed a
peace plan that might work-- if the Bush forces get out of the way.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, I am concerned that the provision of respecting the Iraqi Constitution actually means respecting the Bush regime's robbery of Iraqi oil and other state assets.
Residents of public housing in New Orleans want to return, and are
fighting government plans to demolish the housing and build new
buildings which would have room for fewer people.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A UK minister was disgusted by the video of Hussein's execution. Not by
the execution itself, mind you, just that there was a video.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Italy, by campaigning against the death penalty,
is focusing attention on what really matters.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A few weeks ago, the Israeli army announced that
Palestinians had been banned from Shuhada street in Hebron for six years "by
mistake". But Palestinians had to struggle to walk on that street-- and
when they finally did, they were attacked by Israeli settlers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A large nonviolent protest in Bil'in, with both Israeli and
Palestinian officials, was met with violence from Israeli soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Some British soldiers in the Bush forces, who were caught on video
beating up helpless Iraqi prisoners, will not be prosecuted.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Tali Fahima, an Israeli who was threatened with execution for making
contact with a Palestinian militant, has been released from prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces handed over Diyala province to "Iraqi" troops. The result was that the resistance more or less took over.
The Iraqi army of collaborators is good for only two things: massacring Sunnis, and perhaps, in the future, saving face for Bush while he pulls the Bush forces out.
During 2006, Israeli attacks killed 660 Palestinians, while
Palestinians killed 23 Israelis. Those 23 are Israel's excuse for
killing 660 (and wounding thousands). However, killing is just a
fraction of Israeli violence against Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bert Sacks, who accuses the US of deliberately killing Iraqi children through the economic sanctions, was fined for bringing medicine to Iraq. He has taken his case to the Supreme Court.
I and most of the world expected, after the Gulf War, that Saddam Hussein would comply quickly to get the sanctions lifted. If things had taken that course, the sanctions would not have done much. Of course, he did not. But I wonder what the US would have done if Hussein had complied with the UN demands. Would it have twisted the facts to keep the sanctions going?
Journalist Sarah Olson, who has been called to testify against Lt Watada, says that such subpoenas of journalists threaten freedom of political speech in the US.
Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America.
Bush's "surge" plan seems to come from neocons who have wanted more
troops for the occupation of Iraq all along.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A temporary increase in troop levels has no chance of defeating a popular resistance movement.
Israel raided Ramallah, killing four Palestinians, just before an
Olmert-Mubarak summit on "peace".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Exxon spent $16 million
trying to create doubt about global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps Exxon should be held financially responsible for damage caused by global warming which might have been prevented if not for Exxon's obstruction. They'd probably drop this campaign in a hurry!
The trial of Lt. Watada, and
its implications.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is
trying to seize the power to open Americans' mail without a
court order. He did this with a "signing statement" that totally
reverses the meaning of a law that he signed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
President Bush is dedicated to the establishment of tyranny and the abolition of human rights. He is the worst enemy of Americans -- and the rest of the world as well.
The Asian Human Rights Commission condemned the execution of Saddam
Hussein for the
failure of the trial to follow international norms of
law and human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's War on the Environment suffered a reverse, as a court struck
down the EPA's relaxation of smog limits.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The execution of Saddam Hussein was used by Iraqi Shi'ites as part of their murderous power struggle with the Sunnis.
Gone by not forgotten: the basic human rights that separated the US from tyranny.
Driving Afghanistan's "almost finished" ring-road
is a good way to find out the
true conditions in Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A retired Bush forces soldier with PTSD was notified that he would be sent to Iraq, and threatened to kill himself. To prevent this, the police shot him dead.
The police's action was irrational, but at least this soldier got his wish: to die rather than help oppress another country. However, it would have been better for him to desert. That way he could have done something positive with his life, rather than only avoid doing harm.
The Iraqi government demonstrated its commitment to human rights by
closing a Dubai TV station's local office. The station is accused
of sympathizing with the Baath party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The execution of Saddam Hussein seems to have spurred violence in
Iraq, and Bush forces casualties are increasing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Flynt Leverett, former CIA analyst, says Bush tried to gag him by
falsely claiming his article revealed national secrets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
(The CIA had already checked his text and decided it revealed no secrets.)
Faux News has noticed how the intersectarian war in Iraq
serves Bush interests.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
President-elect Correa of Ecuador demands that the government of
Colombia pay compensation for the damages caused in Ecuador by the
drug-eradication chemical spraying which it carries out, mainly in
Colombia but also illegaly in Ecuador, under the orders of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
More about the damage that this spraying causes--to crops, and to
human health.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thanks to the War on Drugs,
marijuana is now the top cash crop in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Libya has sentenced several Bulgarian nurses to death, after torturing
them into confessing that they deliberately infected patients with
HIV.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Evidence that HIV had contaminated the hospital before those nurses worked there was ignored.
The total failure of B'liar's middle east trip is making the servility
of his "special relationship" with Bush clear to everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
But don't expect B'liar to admit the truth, even when he knows everyone knows. What B'liar says to the public is never honest, it is theater, and his motto is, "The show must go on."
The International Crisis Group, which studies how to end and prevent war,
says that only a new diplomatic approach can stop Iraq from falling apart
into a "failed state".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think it is too late already to prevent Iraq from falling apart. The right thing to do is to accept this unstoppable change, and help it go through in a way that results in reduced violence.
The US: prison without bars. Most Americans are not aware of the extent to which government surveillance is being extended over all our activities.
Keep in mind that, through the USAP AT RIOT act, all businesses' data about you and me is immediately available to Big Brother's police without even a court order. This is why I use cash rather than credit cards to buy things, and why I don't have a cell phone. And when I travel on Greyhound, I never give them my right name.
I would say that surveillance is the first sign of incipient tyranny, except that the US government has already gone well beyond the first.
The EU caved in to pressure from fishing interests and made just small
cuts in cod quotas, disregarding scientific advice that this could
lead to
wiping out the cod.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The EU's arrangements for regulating fishing are grossly and dangerously inadequate.
Some bears in Europe have stopped hibernating.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is one sign, among many, of how global warming has deranged the world's ecosystems.
Uri Avnery writes about the possible futures for Israel.
How many people died in Iraq today?
House Democrats plan to acknowledge the
challenge to a Florida election that was apparently thrown by electronic
voting machines.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Nonviolent protest against the annexation wall has spread to the
Palestinian village of Umm Salamuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Political consultants who turn around and lobby the officials they
once advised are a a growing form of corruption in US governments at
all levels.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
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