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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
A Brazilian scientist has been sentenced to prison for caring for rescued
orphan baby monkeys. People suspect there are nasty motives behind this
obvious injustice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The concept of "biopiracy" is completely misguided, because it endorses the idea of patenting life-saving drugs and raises an argument only about who ought to get the loot.
The Bush regime broke the law by not publishing legally mandated reports on the danger of global warming.
The NIH is trying to track its workers' communication with members of
Congress, apparently to intimidate them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Muqtada al Sadr has asked his militia to cease fire for 6 months to reduce
the violence in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The book Inside Spin explains how PR companies pervasively slant our "journalism". I hope to read it some day.
If you buy it, please don't get it through Amazon.
Meat-eating causes more global warming than cars, protestors are starting
to point out.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Eating less meat is important.
Christine Todd Whitman had a bad environmental record as governor of New Jersey, but fabricated a "green" image. As head of the EPA, she made most of the 9/11 rescue workers ill, by falsely telling them the air was safe to breath; but she gave the impression that she wanted to do that job honestly and only Bush stopped her.
Now she lobbies for nuclear power plants.
I see no contradiction between the statements that Whitman as head of EPA set out to weaken environmental protection, and that she tried to do more than Bush would allow. Perhaps both are true.
In Britain, the Liberal Democratic party supports taxes on CO2-emitting
activities and binding annual CO2 emission targets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Burmese military government recruits non-political prisoners into a
secret force to attack protestors.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The genocide of the Armenians inspired was inspiration for the later
genocide of the Jews.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The UK plans to increase the flood defenses of London
due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Global warming is good for the construction industry. As they build more runways, we pay them to build flood defenses. And as buildings get flooded and washed away, we have to replace them.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say, "Don't let the DEA stall medical marijuana research." (And use the web site, but a phone call tends to carry more weight.)
Torture Gonzales' evil legacy will endure after his resignation, until it is explicitly abolished.
Attorney General "Torture" Gonzales
has resigned.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
He must not be allowed to escape responsibility for his crimes with just this! And Bush, who ordered them, must be charged as well.
Around the world we are seeing record heat, record rain, record
drought.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Opium production in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is booming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
As long as prohibition keeps the prices high, it will be impossible to suppress production. The only solution is to allow heroin addicts to get cheap, safe injections in doctors' offices.
The US government has imprisoned whistleblowers for reporting corruption. The Bush regime is corrupt at the root: its main goal is to hand out taxpayers' money to certain companies. They probably don't really care about Shield Group or Custer Battles, but in order to protect their own thefts from being stopped or punished, they must establish barriers to prevent interference with such theft. The same barriers then protect the other, smaller thieves.
Police that crushed a harmless large party in the UK by confiscating
its sound system got more than they bargained for — so they
wantonly destroyed property and attacked people. But this is an
example of a bigger problem: regulations that effectively eliminate
freedom of assembly in the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
FEMA and the White House knew, very early, that New Orleans' levees had broken, but kept this secret from the state police and other state personnel. People died from this. And then they covered it up.
Bush has tripled the size of Federal no-bid contracts.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
For the specific case of the War on Drugs, what we need is not competitive bidding. When a war is on drugs, it attacks everyone, indiscriminately. We need to help that war get off drugs.
Canadian protestors accuse police infiltrators of acting as provocateurs.
A right wing organization plans to spread lies about Iraq and al Qa'ida to
support Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This is clear proof that they have rejected the idea of truth.
The weekly Bil'in protests against the Israeli annexation strip
continue; the police attacked protestors who were sitting down
to avoid any appearance of threat.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
There is a proposal in the UK to put GPS tracking devices in school uniforms.
Parents tend to exaggerate the size of real but small dangers to their children, so such dangers are commonly used as excuses for government censorship. Now they are to be used as excuses for total surveillance as well.
Bush, Vietnam, and the Bloodbath: Good for Business.
The Great Iraq Swindle: corruption isn't the exception, it is the whole system.
These crimes should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the war itself was a crime.
Scott McCausland, as a parole condition, has been ordered to install Windows on his computer so that the government can monitor him.
We always knew Windows was designed to spy on you.
Most Iraqis
can't get safe water to drink.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The only rational conclusion Iraqis can draw is that they should be ready to give their lives to kick out the Bush forces, because otherwise they will die anyway.
The Burmese military are cracking down on large protests in Rangoon.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
("Yangon" is the military regime's name for Rangoon, just as they call Burma "Myanmar".)
The government of Sudan is still sending arms to Darfur.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush always lies about Iraq. When Bush compares Iraq with Vietnam,
he misrepresents the history of the Vietnam War, too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government is not on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction
targets for 2020, just as it will miss them for 2010.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Declaring long-range targets is an easy way to postpone dealing with the issue and avoid real (and thus uncomfortable) solutions. The government can pretend it will meet the targets until it gets so close that there is no hope of meeting them, at which point it can set another long-range target, further in the future.
Bush's support for Fatah, together with its willingness to make one-sided
concessions to Israel, has cut its support among Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The only way to encourage moderate and secular Muslims is to enable them to get something for their people. If the US makes them all knuckle under, only Islamists can benefit.
US citizens:
oppose the $30 billion military aid package to Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
If Israel were threatened with a real attack, I would support aid for its defense. However, in recent years it is Israel that does the attacking, and there is no reason to support that.
Especially if the real use of these funds will be to attack Iran.
A freed prisoner of a Russian "mental hospital" says that many of the
patients seemed normal but the staff frequently tortured them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
She was forcibly drugged while in the hospital and does not know what the drugs were.
Freedom of association is also being suffocated in Russia.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congressional Democrats are bowing to pressure from Bush and failing to really oppose the war, or his surveillance plans. In effect, electing them did no good.
Recall that among the Democrats' demands for conditions for al Maliki to fulfill was that of passing the law to hand over Iraq's oil to US companies.
When Israel closed the case on the murder of 10-year-old Abir Aramin,
apparently shot by Israeli police, ex-soldiers joined Palestinians to
protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush wants to claim his troop increase has done some sort of good for Iraqis, but the facts say no. The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has actually increased since then.
To try to prevent the partition of Iraq into Sunni and Shi'ite areas (and perhaps into smaller groups as well) is impossible, so it is pure nonsense to claim that Bush's occupation is justified by that purpose.
The "democratic" leaders that Bush selects for Iraq have a pattern of
being replaced when they no longer suit him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Another Republican plan to manipulate the 2008 presidential election.
This is if they can't do it using computerized voting machines or by stopping Democrats from voting — both of which they will surely try.
When Dr Steven Nissen reported harmful side effects for avandia (a
rather new drug), an FDA spokesman tried to smear him with lies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
As part of Bush's War on Integrity, the FDA considers the defense and support of the big drug companies to be its mission.
Several Republican presidential candidates want to ban contraceptive
pills by classifying them as "abortion". Bush has been trying to
suppress contraception for years.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
As the British prepare to pull out of the Bush forces,
Bush continues to insist he is winning in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I think Bush figures that a certain fraction of the US will believe whatever he says, and that this fraction can ensure the war continues. He doesn't care whether Iraq suffers increasing violence, or attains the peace of the grave, as long as he doesn't openly lose his war.
By the way, the Khmer Rouge (once in power) were supported by the US and China, and were eventually overthrown by Vietnam.
The Bushmen are still insanely planning to attack Iran.
Cheney in particular seems to be pushing for this, and Cheney
usually decides what Bush will do.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I would support a war to liberate Iran from the cruel regime of the religious extremists, provided that (1) the Iranian people wanted to be liberated in this way and (2) we could count on the new regime to establish human rights and democracy. But everything we know says that neither one is true. Bush has never respected either freedom or democracy — neither in his own country, nor anywhere else in the world. It is absurd to think he would do so in Iran.
The ethics were the same for the invasion of Iraq.
Philip Morris is pushing a law for weak FDA regulation of tobacco, which it helped to write, so as to prevent anything that might really reduce tobacco smoking.
Tobacco, like alcohol, heroin, cocaine and other dangerous, addictive drugs, must not be prohibited — prohibition tramples individual freedom and causes more harm than the drugs. But we should adopt strong measures short of prohibition to discourage its use.
The privatization of the occupation of Iraq even includes intelligence analysis.
Senator Levin wants to oust "Iraqi" PM al Maliki unless he does his
job: to hand over Iraq's oil to the occupying forces. Al Maliki is nearly powerless, but it seems there is still one thing
he can do for his country.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Potentially deadly stinging jellyfish, usually found closer to the equator,
have shown up off Britain. I would expect this is a result of global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
9 gorillas in the Congo were killed by humans this year.
That is over 1% of the world population of gorillas.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congressional Democrats are pushing for lots of "green" initiatives,
but the most obvious conservation measures have been vetoed by big
business.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Many cosmetics and body creams contain estrogen mimics
that can feminize boys, increase risk of breast cancer for girls,
and also damage fish once they get into sewage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Nir Rosen says that "Iraq does not exist anymore". It has been turned
into a battleground for warlords, like Mogadishu, and Bush has no power to
alter the situation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
President Chavez has proposed changes to 33 articles of the constitution of Venezuela.
I don't know enough to judge the merits of most these changes, but the one about declaring "special military zones" doesn't sound good. We are scared of what Bush might do with similar emergency powers. Even if Chavez never succumbs to such temptation, what about a future president of Venezuela?
As Congress works to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program,
Bush is trying to change the rules so fewer children can get in.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A Russian activist who criticized conditions in mental hospitals
just won her release from one.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Brazilian government made a corrupt deal with loggers to provide land
to poor people through deforestation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
It was easier than seizing illegally deforested land.
The Liberal Democratic Party plans to directly attack Brown's
"surveillance society".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Gilded Age Crime:
Poor Go Homeless, Wealthy Get Bailouts.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I wish I could share his confidence that a Democratic victory in 2008 will make a difference in this. I cannot imagine that Hillary Clinton would serve the poor rather than the rich.
As US influence weakens, other powers are creating a multipolar world.
Given how the US uses its dominion, weakening that dominion is good. Unfortunately, all the rivals want to have a 19-century military competition, and none champions human rights.
Karl Rove did leak the information about Valerie Plame.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US Army claims it restricts soldiers' blogs for military security reasons, but we all knew the motives are political. Journalists found that the worst security leaks in soldiers blogs were mild compared with what the Army publishes in its own sites.
Putin is rewriting Russia's history textbooks to rehabilitate Stalin.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Rewriting history follows Stalin's example.
Israel will send 2000 refugees from Darfur
back to their deaths.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Protestors at Hearthow Airport tried to blockade BAA's offices, but were
attacked by police before they got there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Here's an analysis of the mind set that leads some people to disregard the
danger of global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
However, that picture is incomplete. Imagine if a few rich people are paying a fraction of the public — including lots of politians, of course — to ignore the problem for as long as possible. Then you get the whole situation.
Muqtada al-Sadr is trying to form an alliance of Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'tes
against "foreign elements" -- the Bush forces and Al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This is the first plan I have heard that makes sense.
If such an alliance takes over the non-Kurdish parts of Iraq, it will probably oppress women terribly. It could be worse than Saddam Hussein. But it will not be a big step up from occupation by the Bush forces.
The FBI deleted information from the Wikipedia article about Guantanamo.
US residents:
ask the state of Texas not to execute Kenneth Foster.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
For more information,
see this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The death penalty is always unjust, even for intentional murders; even for mass-murderers such as Saddam Hussein and George Bush. What this case shows is the bloodthirsty nature of support for the death penalty.
Note: The top link in this entry is to a form asking the State of Texas to stay the execution. That form is intended for U.S. citizens and requires input of a U.S. state and zip code.
Israeli settlers cut a Palestinian water supply to fill a swimming pool, and sent along the dirty water from the pool for Palestinians to drink.
A report from the Heathrow protest camp. Police confiscate banners,
pretending they are weapons, and force protestors to march around by
threatening them with trucks. Meanwhile, right-wing papers lie about
them and the state pretends they are terrorists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The police and the government, grinning liars, are the enemy of everyone's freedom, and risk destroying civilization too.
53% of Americans expect General Petraeus' report to be a whitewash.
At least they are learning something about Bush. Bush will not allow a general to make an honest report, any more than he allows NASA or EPA scientists to do so. Note how Bush's spokesman tries to deflect attention from Bush's honesty by pretending that the issue is Petraeus' honesty.
However, Americans need to learn to distrust Bush about more than just success or failure. His claimed reasons for the war (and other actions) are deceptions too.
A proposed new place for advertisements: on radio in school buses, with students as captive audiences.
Projects like these are encouraged by the general attitude of governments at all levels that "Everything is for sale." When stadiums are named after companies that paid to use them as advertising, entrepreneurs might well expect that radio on school buses will also be offered.
If governments need more money, then rather than selling off everything, they should tax businesses more. Anything other problem that impedes this, such as "free trade" treaties, needs to be corrected.
CARE says that the US food aid policy is hurts both the poor
and the farmers of Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This article isn't precise enough for me to form a conclusion about that question, but it is clear that food subsidies in the US waste scarce petroleum (for fertilizer) and water.
The US voting machines that ruined an election were made in a sweatshop in Manila.
The British government sneakily gave funds to oil drilling in the
ocean off Sakhalin, leaving the environmental study to be done later
(once the project was finished). The noise is driving western gray
whales to extinction.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens and residents: comment on Bush's new plan to speed up executions, by cutting the federal courts out of the loop.
US states often execute innocent people, athat Joe Amrine should be executed even though he was innocent.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
In addition to the main Sunni-Shi'a civil war, Iraq is full of other
battles between sects, ethnic groups, and parties. And the violence
is getting worse everywhere.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
No western army of occupation has any chance of putting things back together. I doubt that anything else can stop the multiple civil wars, either. Force alone can't stop people from fighting if they are prepared to die. For anyone to end the fighting in Iraq, he would have to somehow change the attitudes of those who are now fighting each other—to suggest a different direction of loyalty.
The global-warming-denial PR machine is still campaigning desperately
to stop us from saving our planet. It represents businesses whose
only concern is to make as much money as possible in the next few years.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Political systems need to develop ways to neutralize such conspiracies, if they are to qualify as "democratic".
AT&T censored criticism of Bush during a Pearl Jam concert. When the band complained, AT&T said that the censor made a mistake.
Despite a smear campaign, the Heathrow Airport protests are
strengthening public opinion in favor of a green tax on flying.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
However, with a government whose main goal is to please business, public opinion isn't always enough to change anything. Clown's "Labour Party", like other parties that have sold their soul to business, do what big business wants unless practically forced by the public not to. Whether or not they directly take bribes, they are corrupt.
To restore democracy, we have to replace them with people whose first loyalty is to the public good, and who give business much lower priority.
Bush plans to let the police use spy satellites to monitor everyone in the US.
In the short term, we won't know what the police can see with these satellites, but the police will find out. In the medium term, as this knowledge spreads through the police, organized crime will find out the satellites' capabilities from police that are on the take. Eventually we will all know, more or less. Then their capabilities will not be secret any more. But we will still face a government that becomes increasingly powerful as it becomes increasingly illegitimate and cruel.
We're headed for another record year for disappearance of Arctic ice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A movement for better treatment of egg-laying hens is gaining strength
in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
It doesn't seem plausible that they could afford to import eggs from Asia. Wouldn't it cost too much to import them fast enough to be fresh?
However, this is an example of a general point that is important for all social issues.
When companies say, "Don't try to make us act ethically or we will move to Asia", our response should be, "If you move, we won't let you sell here." Rather than a law requiring local egg-producers to treat hens humanely, countries and states should adopt laws requiring all eggs sold there to be produced humanely.
"Free trade" treaties such as NAFTA and the WTO eliminate this option. And they do the same thing for a host of other issues. That makes the treaties evil. For the sake of human rights, for humane treatment of animals, for protection of the environment, and for all democratic values, we must abolish those treaties.
The US prison system is barbaric, and continues growing from its own
momentum.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US govt spent $1.6 billion in propaganda in 2003/4.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Human Rights Watch says that all sides in Somalia are
violating human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Ethiopian intervention was supposed to be quick, and leave the "interim government" in power. That "interim government" was a creation of foreigners and never had any popular support, and being installed by a foreign army didn't win any support for it. Now that the intervention is dragging on, we don't hear much about it.
Wolfowitz made the World Bank disregard climate change.
The topic was not supposed to be mentioned.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The World Bank's "investments" often hurt the poor, and impose antidemocratic conditions, while their benefits go mainly to the rich. If these investments fail due to climate change, they still hurt the poor and democracy, but they don't benefit anyone.
Police are trying to interfere with construction of the Heathrow
Airport protest camp.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Yearly Kos meeting of Democratic activists excluded the issue of Iraq. Bloggers organized their own session, off the grounds, and then had to publicize it themselves.
The Bush forces find themselves fighting all sides in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
It's a mistake to think they preserve a balance of power, because there isn't one.
The UK government shamelessly ordered police to use "anti-terror" laws
against protestors at Heathrow Airport, and takes the position that
any protest which "distracts the attention of the police" is illegal.
This clearly puts the UK government in the camp of the enemies of
freedom.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Although Heathrow Airport did not get an injunction against all the 5 million people that it asked for, it did get one against all the members of the organization Plane Stupid. Thus, the forces of tyranny have advanced another step.
Amnesty International has decided to uphold abortion
as a human right for rape victims, despite attempts
by the Vatican to discourage this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Police in North Providence attacked a protest directed
against a restaurant,
injuring some protestors (one perhaps permanently) and then
charging them with "assaulting an officer".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
It's amazing how often protestors hit policemen's sticks with their heads, or break their bones on policemen's bodies.
Most Democratic presidential candidates are in no hurry to end the
occupation of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I expect that the cited facts are accurate, but it is also worth noting what the article does not say. It does not mention Dennis Kucinich, for instance.
The control of Congress by the Democratic Party has not had much
effect because a substantial right-wing bloc of Democrats supports
Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Omar Deghayes, who may soon get to leave Guantanamo prison, reports that he has been repeatedly tortured there.
Rescue workers in New York are outraged by Giuliani's exaggeration of what he did on 9/11.
Dalit children face segregation in school, and sometimes are driven
out of school by systematic insults from the teachers. And that's
just the beginning. They are excluded from food stores, from wells,
from government offices, from having mail delivered, from voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The politicians and celebrities that supported the attempted conquest of Iraq must be held accountable. They must not be allowed to get away with saying "Let's move on."
Christian cruelty extends even to the dead.
I wouldn't refuse to hold a funeral even for someone as evil as Bush. I would just turn it into a celebration.
The British Bush forces are retreating from Basra,
abandoning it to Shi'a militias.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Rule by militias is horrible, but the heavy hand that would be needed to maintain permanent occupation is even worse.
To protect its good reputation from the consequences of its errors —
and its crimes — the British Army now forbids soldiers from blogging.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congress seems headed for spending money to protect the Everglades.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This is good, but we must not neglect the long-term threat that the Everglades will be inundated by rising sea levels. The Everglades slope very gradually down into the ocean. How high above sea level is the highest point in them? If the Greenland ice cap melts, will they entirely disappear?
Operation Straight Up, with US government support, is sending the Bush
forces in Iraq a video game in which Christians fight to exterminate
everyone else.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The head of US Army chaplains is an apocalyptic religious fanatic
too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Because hedge funds operate in secret, they create the risk of an
economic crash.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The crash of 1929 occurred because investors came to treat inherently risky leveraged investments as if they were safe. Years of rising stock prices had led them suppose that losing was not a possibility. So they sought the investments which would give them the biggest profit if the market continued to rise, which also were the riskiest investments in the case of a downturn.
Hedge funds could be today's equivalent. And our government is about as vigilant for us as that of Herbert Hoover.
Bush is adamant against increasing educational benefits for veterans.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
If the US Army were engaged in legitimately defending the US, or simply standing prepared to do so if needed, I would be in favor of "increasing the quality" of its recruits. However, given that it has been hijacked by Bush for an unjust war of conquest, I cannot consider that goal to be desirable.
Starbucks has been very effective at faking "social responsibility",
but its treatment of workers is as bad as WalMart. Now it is on trial
for union busting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
PR companies help corporations and government deceive and manipulate the public more than we usually realize.
The Democrats in the US Senate lacked the guts to increase taxes on
hedge funds.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The UK has finally decided to rescue its residents who are imprisoned
in Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar made excuses to let them languish. Perhaps he was more concerned with displeasing Bush than with imprisoning people without trial.
Roadside bomb attacks in Iraq reached an all-time high in July. This
proves that Dubya's troop increase has not done him any good.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
German journalists face prosecution for publishing information from
leaked German government documents that indicated knowledge of
kidnappings by the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
If anyone is prosecuted, it should be the German officials who knew about these kidnappings and failed to act to stop them.
When corporations advertise themselves as environmentally friendly, are they lying? Saab is.
George Monbiot: Ethical shopping is just a way of saying I'm rich.
Individual action can create a demonstration of feasibility — for fair trade, for conservation, for any matter of ethical or sustainable business practices. To extend those demonstrations to a real solution requires laws to ensure the practices are generally followed.
But the mass media generally focus on individual action rather than collective action. Once I listened to an NPR talk show about how people could improve their working conditions. I called in and suggested that workers could do this by forming a union. The host said, "We only want to talk about individual action here."
The Yangtze river dolphin is
now officially considered extinct. It was wiped out by accidental fishing
and by noise from boats.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces are arming Sunni militias to fight against al Qa'ida. It's
logical, but self-defeating, because the presence of the occupying army in Iraq
provides the impetus for al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's "surge" troop increase has clearly failed to win the war, but it
has achieved its real goal: buying Bush more time to continue it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Long-suppressed film footage of the effects and victims of the A-bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will now be broadcast.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign the petition to Congress saying to
reverse the gift of additional spying powers to King George.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Brian Haw continues to defy the UK government's attempt to suppress his
vigil against the war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Shame on his wife for abandoning him. If he has the courage to do this, she should at least have had the courage to be supportive.
Human rights campaigners are making use of the Olympics to pressure China,
which continues to trample human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Heathrow Airport failed to gain the injunction against millions of Britons
who are potential protestors.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This attempted protest-suppression gives Plane Stupid a boost with which to tackle the real struggle: to prevent airport expansion that would increase global warming.
But it is just a small step towards
restoring freedom of speech in the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces handed out 190,000 guns to "Iraqi" troops who have since "lost" them, perhaps to Iraqi patriots.
The Bush forces are trying to ally themselves with Sunni militias to fight against al Qa'ida. It's logical in a narrow sense, but self-defeating, because presence of the occupying Bush forces in Iraq is what enables al Qa'ida to recruit.
The propaganda in
this article is in the background: it calls the sheikhs that agree to work
for Bush "America's allies", as if Bush were on America's side.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
China is modernizing the slogans that promote the one-child rule, but the
program continues.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The practice of choosing to have boys instead of girls probably contributes to the effectiveness of the policy, since the excess men mostly won't have any children.
After Israeli troops killed British filmmaker James Miller, the Israeli
army covered it up with lies. The UK calls his death murder and demands they
prosecute the killers, but Israel continues to lie to shield them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Senate voted to
give Bush more surveillance power, in a display of
spinelessness. The fox said his power to watch the henhouse was
insufficient, so they increased it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
David Sugar faces a criminal investigaton for writing an article.
Here it is.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This report says that Fatah never really fought against Hamas in Gaza
— that there was a political decision, high up, not to fight
back.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I am not sure what to make of the report or how to reconcile it with other information.
Orangutans display awareness of what others do or do not understand.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Long-lived Greenland sharks have very high concentrations PCBs and
dioxin, showing that this contamination has spread around the world.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery: White Elephants.
How Israel treats its Palestinian prisoners.
(That page was posted by an Israeli peace group.)
Many of these prisoners were never charged with a crime.
The average number of Atlantic cyclones per year has just about doubled
since the early 1900s.
International Energy Agency's latest report says that the price of oil
will rise greatly in 2010-2012, confirming the basic idea of peak oil.
If the price temporarily falls in 2008-2009, governments will face the
tempation to give people a quick fix of cheap gasoline. What they
ought to do is increase taxes to provide impetus for conservation, so that
the blow won't hit as hard. Which do you think the US will do?
Is it a long drought in the Southwest, or just the end of an abnormally
wet century?
Palestinians lost their case to prevent Israel's annexation wall from
being built through their farm lands. Supposedly this is necessary to protect
a Jewish colony which shouldn't be there in the first place.
One land grab is the excuse for another.
The words "wall" and "fence" give the wrong impression, because
this strip is over 60 yeards wide. It destroys a broad swath of farmland.
The Iraqi government has little power, but what little it has is
enough for police to sue journalists for their news reporting.
The "brown clouds" of Asian cooking fires are a substantial
contribution to global warming.
Most of the UK public is opposed to placing US missile defense
facilities there, and Clown is facing some heat.
A report says that the head of Scotland Yard was kept in the dark by
his senior subordinates about the fact that police had shot an
innocent man through overeagerness.
I have to suspect that this was due to some sort of general or
specific request that they not tell him what he would rather not know.
NSA's spying on Americans was even bigger than previously
announced,
and we don't know how big.
Bush is now asking Congress to extend his power for spying without
court orders. His power ought to be reduced, not extended.
Officers in the Bush forces say Bush is wrong in claiming that their
enemy is al Qa'ida.
In fact, all Iraqis are enemies of the Bush regime, except the Kurds,
who are content with their de-facto independence.
The Bush regime has ordered that the CIA can kidnap anyone that
it believes has a vague, indirect relationship with al Qa'ida. That could
be interpreted to mean, essentially, anyone in the world.
This is part of Cheney's general policy of making the US just as evil
as its adversaries.
Greg Palast's investigative fund needs money.
Palast informed us about how the Bushmen stole the 2000
election, how they planned in advance to steal the 2004
election, and how they are now planning to steal the 2008 election.
The Republicans in Ohio have illegally destroyed most of the 2004
election ballots, defying a court order to preserve them.
They probably figure that they can break laws with impunity
because Republican state officials will protect them.
Journalist Wendy Williams was attacked with an anonymous lawsuit
threat, as well as lies, for writing a book that praises the proposed
Cape Wind project.
GE has a new greenwashing technique: a credit card that puts 1%
of the spending into carbon offseting projects.
If the carbon offseting really worked, 1% would be too small to solve
the problem. So this would tend to lull the public into thinking they
have solved the problem with a tiny sacrifice.
However, it's worse than that: many so-called carbon offseting
projects, such as tree planting, don't accomplish much to reduce
global warming.
Those gaping flaws are the reason this credit card must be considered
greenwashing rather than a real step towards a solution.
In a rare victory against Bush's War on Integrity, the Fish and
Wildlife Service has agreed to review 8 edangered species decisions.
This is out of over 200 decisions that may have been corrupted.
The history of the CIA is a series of absurd failures of intelligence.
Its successes have been assassinations, coups, and bought elections.
Bush is already preparing to disregard any legal requirement established
by Congress to withdraw the Bush forces from Iraq.
There's a solution to this: impeach Bush and Cheney too! It should
have been done years ago, but it isn't too late.
The main Sunni party has pulled its ministers out of
Bush's Iraqi government, much as al Sadr's party did
a couple of months ago.
Their complaints reflect the fact that the Iraqi government
is basically impotent.
I expect Bush to lose his war in Iraq, but he may well succeed in
ruining two countries in the process.
The Bush forces say they want to keep occupying Iraq for years,
and the cost in money keeps increasing.
Thus, the only way to end the occupation will be through a
confrontation with Bush.
The UN will send a substantial force of peacekeepers to Darfur.
Hospitals in Gaza lack drugs, even plaster for casts, because of the
Israeli blockade.
A blockade is a less spectacular way of killing innocent people than
dropping bombs, but it kills them just as dead. The same thing
happened in Iraq under the US-imposed sanctions
Heathrow Airport seeks an injunction to forbid protestors' taking
the subway to get to the airport, but London will fight against it
in court.
Clown says that expanding airports is needed for economic growth.
What will be left of this economic growth after flooding, heat waves,
dying seas, and failing agriculture?
The boss of a concentration camp in Cambodia, who presided over
many executions, now will face charges.
The Khmer Rouge killed between one million and three million.
Bush's war has killed around a million. Making him pretty
much comparable to Pol Pot. When will Bush face a court
for his mass murder?
The Bush forces have blocked all car traffic into some areas of
Baghdad, so the people there cannot get food and cannot get to
hospitals.
Gordon Clown is not the poodle that B'liar was: he says he will
pull British troops out of the Bush forces whether Bush likes it or not.
Gordon Clown's agenda for tyranny: increased power and increased
surveillance.
The Bush forces met with Iranian representatives, and say they agreed to
talk more -- but they seem to be more interested in cursing Iran than
cooperating.
The supposed evidence of Iranian support for Iraqi militias is doubted by
everyone that doesn't support the Bush regime.
Anti-arms-trade dissidents in the UK were grabbed by police just for
asking whether an anonymous factory was in fact the Nottingham Small Arms
Factory.
As B'liar postures as a peace negotiator,
James Wolfensohn explains how his efforts to work for peace were undercut
politically.
Russia has resumed the Soviet practice of
imprisoning dissidents in mental hospitals.
1/7 of the inhabitants of Iraq—four million people—have become
refugees, a disaster which is the result of Bush's crime.
Despite the violence in Iraq,
Britain sends back nearly all Iraqis that ask for asylum there.
1/3 of iraqis "need urgent aid", according to Oxfam.
The reason MI5 refused to help al-Rawi get out of Guantanamo is that
they put him there—by lying about him. And his interrogation by
the US was based on what he had freely told MI5 while helping them.
General Petraeus and al Maliki can't get along with each other even though
they are ostensibly working for the same boss.
Genetically engineered crops produce lots of unusual proteins in
addition to the ones they were intended to make. Both companies
and regulators are careless about ensuring their safety.
Evidence says Pat Tillman was shot from behind at a range of 30 feet
while no combat was going on. Was he murdered so he couldn't oppose
the war?
MI5 promised al-Rawi, for his help, to protect him; but when Bush
decided to kidnap him, MI5 made excuses. He was taken to Afghanistan
and Guantanamo for torture; MI5 says, "I know nothing, nothing!"
Bush has claimed the power to freeze the assets of anyone he considers
to be "undermining" the occupation of Iraq — by fiat. This is
another blow against the rule of law in the US, which continues its
slide into tyranny.
The Bush regime's general tendency is to interpret its powers in the
broadest possible way. "Undermining" could be stretched to include
criticizing Halliburton, suing Halliburton, agitating politically to
end the occupation — almost anything that opposes the war.
From - Tue
Polls late last year found that 2/3 of Iraqis want the Bush forces to
pull out.
The 2 million Americans in prison have been
turned
into a slave labor force, and the businesses involved pressure to
imprison more people.
Pepsi admits that Aquafina is tap water.
Dasani from Coca Cola Corporation is also tap water. The difference
is, it is sold by a company that murders union organizers.
Machsom Watch, the organization of Israelis that keep track of human
rights abuses at Israeli checkpoints in Palestine, must be doing a
good job: the army is starting to harass and arrest their members.
The recent meeting between some Israeli and Arab officials
shows there is no prospect for any kind of agreement.
Bush wants to create an appearance of progress
to distract attention from reality-based criticism.
The FDA's inspection procedures are clownishly inept, so
businesses regularly evade them.
I suspect this is not coincidence. For instance, the FDA officials
who expect to get good jobs with food importers could choose the more
lax option when those importers request it. And these importers have
lots of ways to lobby for reductions in inspection activity, presented
as "ways to economize".
Gorbachev, who dismantled the Soviet Empire, rebukes the US for
creating another empire.
However, the empire that we must fight is not ruled by the US.
It is ruled by the megacorporations, with governments such as that
of the US used to keep each other in line.
Carol Wallace, age 63, accused the police of harassing people in her
housing project. Four days later, police raided her home.
There is the Big Brother: Workplace Control and Workforce Surveillance.
U.S. House votes 262-165 to continue funding DEA's war on medical
marijuana patients — but the opposition increases each time.
Oppressing Iraqis is not enough for the Bush forces; they even
abuse their own construction workers.
Damning proof of Republican efforts to steal the 2004
election through voter suppression.
The most dangerous criminals in the US work for Bush, and were
rewarded by him for this crime.
Senators have demanded an independent prosecutor to investigate
Torture Gonzales for lying to them.
Bush will surely continue to protect his team of liars. Congress
should stop farting around and impeach both Bush and Cheney.
Charges against Mohamed Haneef have been dropped,
but he still faces arbitrary expulsion from Australia
for no reason except that he was falsely suspected.
President Chavez plans to require cable TV channels (such as RCTV)
to drop their programming for his speeches.
When RCTV broadcast on the airwaves, it must have been required to
carry these speeches. This won't lead to more interruptions of its
programming than it had before.
On the other hand, citizens of Venezuela have plenty of access to
Chavez's speeches, so there is no public need to make any more
channels distribute them. They are not about emergencies. If his
motive is just to punish RCTV a second time, that seems immature.
B'liar promised to put sanctions on Burma, but didn't, and now the UK
government protects companies that do business with Burma.
The Bush regime now recognizes Jamil el-Banna was arrested by mistake,
but he is still held in Guantanamo because the UK won't let him back.
The UK took years to admit that his companion, al-Rawi, was in fact
helping UK intelligence. I am sure it wasn't because they didn't
know; it was sheer treachery. Why anyone would willingly spy on Al
Qa'ida for US or UK intelligence beats me.
The American Cancer Society and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids are
supporting Philip Morris, aiming to weaken a bill designed to help the
FDA regulate cigarettes.
I wonder whether they have got money from the tobacco companies.
Heathrow Airport plans to suppress protests.
It wants an injunction against over 5 million Britons that could subject them to arrest for
anything that vaguely resembles a protest, anywhere near the airport.
This is an arrogant attack on human rights.
Australia arrested Mohammed Haneef suspecting he helped the failed UK
bomb plot. However, as the evidence for his participation crumbles,
the government refuses to recognize he was not involved.
Governments often tend to behave like this, but the more they are
based on lies, the more they cannot admit any sort of mistake.
US government agencies have stalled for up to 15 years on FOIA
requests.
In Burma, children watch as the government shoots their parents,
and parents watch as the government shoots their children.
If Bush had been at all honest about intervening in Iraq
for the sake of Iraqis, he would have chosen Burma first.
Gordon Clown tried to distance himself from Bush, until Bush pulled
him back into line. How pathetic.
And it transpires that Clown has allowed Bush to use the UK
for the antimissile system, a provocation aimed at Russia.
Israel and the Arab League are talking about peace talks.
It sounds good; however, as Uri Avnery has pointed out, the mere fact
that Arab League representatives went to Israel is a big victory for
Israel — and the Palestinians got nothing for it.
The UK government said it didn't know Bush was transporting suspects
to be tortured, and wouldn't hand over anyone to be tortured.
This fails to address the question of transporting such suspects
through the UK or UK logistical support for their transport.
In addition, no country should hand over any suspects to the US
government without a careful and proper extradition procedure, which
considers the risk that the person will be tortured or not get a fair
trial.
Several states have passed harsh laws that make voter registration
drives so dangerous that no one dares do them.
Instead of extending SCHIP, Bush proposes a tax credit to pay for
private insurance. This is the most expensive and inefficient method
of giving health coverage, so the same money would cover fewer people;
and he proposes to spend less.
If Bush's proposal were adopted, it surely won't be funded enough to
do the whole job.
The UK government insanely plans to reduce rail subsidies.
It will fund increased train capacity with big fare increases.
This is supposed to be a plan to cut overcrowding, and it will surely
work, since it will push to CO2-belching cars and planes.
There is an international effort to protect the sturgeon in the
Caspian Sea, but illegal caviar fishing might ensure their extinction.
I do wonder if the low-quality black-market caviar comes from
somewhere else.
Be that as it may, to risk Caspian sturgeon's extinction just to
preserve a low level of caviar supply is just plain stupid, given the
rapid decline of the sturgeon population. It is very hard to
determine the sustainable level of fishing for any species unless you
can see that the population remains stable. Otherwise it involves
models in which many parameters can only be guessed at. Allowing some
legal caviar sales complicates enforcement, since it opens the door to
disguising illegal caviar as legal, and this practically guarantees
that the official program to preserve the species won't be properly
carried out.
Musharraf doesn't dare crack down on Al Qa'ida in the tribal areas
near Afghanistan, and also doesn't dare let the US do it.
Democrats in Congress want to extend the State Children's Health Insurance
Program so as to provide health insurance to many of the children that
don't have it.
As SiCKO shows, in the US today, having health insurance does not insure that
you get needed medical care.
Bush says he will defy Congress if it charges his officials with contempt.
The Bush forces have drawn up
a plan for Iraqization.
This plan is more realistic than previous plans in just one level: it
recognizes the nature of the sectarian war in Iraq. However, it continues to
inhabit a fantasy world when it disregards the fact that Iraqis generally hate
the Bush forces and want them out, and the concomitant fact that the Iraqi
government and its troops are all collaborators unless they are working
secretly to get the Bush forces out.
A town in Sweden provides electricity and central heating by burning wood
chips, causing zero CO2 emissions.
President Chavez threatened to deport foreign dignitaries that criticize
his policies.
I don't know what Espino said; given his party's policies, he may well have
lied like Faux News. However, this is the wrong way to respond to false
criticism.
I criticized one government policy last Friday while speaking in Venezuela:
the one where the SENIAT (the tax agency) requires people to give their names
and numbers whenever they buy anything (even a book or a meal). ¡Abajo
el SENIAT! I then said that even the SENIAT should use free software.
Later: I learned what Espino said: he criticized Chavez' closure of
RCTV and his plans to eliminate presidential term limits. These are
criticisms, not lies. People should not be punished for stating such
opinions.
The Bush forces arranged another meeting in Iraq with Iranian
representatives. However, things are still going badly for them.
I am particularly pleased that the law to hand over Iraq's oil to the
conquerors is blocked.
Libya has pardoned the foreign nurses who were tortured into confessing
that they had infected 400 childred with HIV.
I wonder how many prisoners in Guantanamo were tortured into false confessions.
The current flood in Britain has exceeded all historical records. It
surprised the public, but not scientists — they have warned for years
that global warming would bring increases in extreme weather.
Japan's biggest nuclear plant, now idled by earthquake damage, sits right
on top of an active fault. Its operators tried to deny the problem —
and falsified inspection records 200 times.
These lies were probably criminal acts. As punishment, the government should
confiscate the entire Tepco stock holdings of everyone convicted.
Pakistan's Supreme Court restored the chief justice that Musharraf had
sacked. Many Pakistanis celebrated this.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell previously told Stephen Hayes
that
the Bushmen had distorted intelligence reports to justify the invasion of
Iraq.
Journalist Shi Tao is imprisoned in China for criticizing government
policy, with Yahoo's help. His mother has sued Yahoo in the US for this.
Yahoo's response: to state its "dismay" to excuse its conduct.
Talk which changes nothing is cheap.
England has had two large floods this summer, and now research shows that
global warming has caused a steadily increasing rainfall there, as predicted.
I wonder if record floods in parts of China are an instance of the same
phenomenon.
Meanwhile, Southern Europe and parts of the American West will
face increasing drought.
Congressman DeFazio is on the "Homeland Security" committee, but
Bush won't let him see the plans for how to run the government after an
attack.
What is heartening here is his reaction: maybe people are right that this
hides a nasty conspiracy. The standard policy of the Bush regime is that the
mouth says "You have no proof we have done anything wrong" while the hands
stop you from checking for proof. On many occasions we later discovered that
this was a cover-up for corruption or worse. Now we must consider this
combination as a prima facie case to indict the regime.
El Salvador's government has arrested several opposition leaders during
a peaceful protest against water privatization.
Water privatization is imposed by the World Bank and IMF with US backing.
Thousands of Iraqi refugee families
have set up their own refugee camps, because the official camps are full.
Uri Avnery:
Bush has twisted the two-state solution into a rag to cover his nakedness.
Thousands of gays have fled Poland, where the government encourages
bigotry.
Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, destroying its economy. Food
aid is getting in, but no commerce is possible.
Israel always says that there is "no one to talk with", and makes sure it
remains true.
Bush and Europe support Israel completely, although they pretend it isn't
so. Thus, there is no prospect for peace or an end to the daily oppression of
Palestinias.
Guantanamo prisoners continue their hunger strike despite regular forced
feeding.
Clown in the UK plans to start arresting people for possession of marijuana
again.
This will only increase the harm done by the War on Drugs.
Sprint has a practice of canceling the accounts of people that complain too much, or ask too many questions, and puts the blame on
them.
This sounds almost like a government--and that makes sense, because
today's large corporations are accustomed to think they rule us.
An ancient tribe in Pakistan now faces the threat of forced
conversion to Islam.
Fanatical Muslims, those that advocate Islamic law, do not believe in
religious freedom. We must respect their personal right to hold their
views, but the views themselves deserve only criticism.
Not all Muslims are fanatical; there are Muslims who are tolerant and
decent. The human tendency to feel concern for others is universal,
and crops up in all places and circumstances. However, these people
are good despite religion, not because of it.
After police attacked a large protest in Oaxaca,
the protestors fought back. The protest intended to reclaim a
traditional festival that has been turned into a
corporate-sponsored tourist event.
State legislators in various states are starting to think about
how to stop companies from playing one state against another
for tax breaks and handouts.
I suggested many years ago that the states should form a union to
bargain collectively with these companies. We could call it "The
United States of America". This union could adopt a rule that
whenever a company starts negotiating with more than one state about
where to site any activity, none of the states can offer it any
discretionary tax breaks or incentives without the approval of all of
the states involved.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to support HR811 --
Rush Holt's bill to protect against electronic voting machine fraud --
as it was adopted by the committee, and reject the changes that have been
made to weaken the bill.
For more information follow this link.
Islamist suicide bombers in Pakistan took revenge for the storming
of the Red Mosque.
Non-extremists in Pakistan will have to organize and fight if they
don't want to be ruled by Taliban.
Cheney covered up proof of conspiracies to create power shortages in
California — then dishonestly blamed Governor Davis for the
consequences of these shortages.
Australia, the driest continent, faces increasing drought due to global warming.
Al Qa'ida uses lies in its PR, just like the Bush regime.
The Bush regime also falsifies Al Qa'ida PR. Mainstream Western media
outlets presented a "new" bin Laden tape which was made in 2001 and
had been aired twice before.
A Jewish chaplain has been labeled a "deserter" after his well
documented complaints about antisemitic harassment were ignored.
Veterans for Freedom pretends to be a "grass roots" pressure group
like the Iraq Veterans Against the War, but it is funded by
Republicans and works directly with the White House.
Each European country can decide whether to require ISPs to give
information to lawsuits by their equivalent of the RIAA, says the EU
Supreme Court.
This means that we will now see a new political battleground, in which
each country must take the side of millions of music-sharing citizens
or the record companies.
A study says that organic farming can produce more food in the
developing world — without more land.
This article presents ostensible proof that the Bush regime
fabricated a "bin Laden" tape.
George Galloway has been suspended temporarily from the UK parliament for
letting Iraqi oil-for-food funds flow into a political activity that he
chaired.
The UK government talks green, but its policies have encouraged cars (and
airplanes) over buses and trains.
Encouraging car travel leads to congestion, and congestion provides
an excuse for universal surveillance schemes, such as the one now
practiced in London and the one proposed by New York Mayor Bloomberg.
A simple increase in gas tax would eliminate these artificial problems while
also helping to save the planet.
The Mediterranean Sea and its bed are full of plastic trash, mainly bags
and food packaging. Future hurricanes are likely to stir it all up.
A general strike shut down the Dominican Republic for a day.
The Dominican Republic recently signed a new low-wage treaty with the US.
A general strike has spread across Peru, as its Bush-league president
makes investors happy while disregarding the poor.
Pharmaceuticals discarded by humans are causing illness for animals and
humans, as they get into the water we drink. Sewage treatment is not designed
to block them.
A number of organizations are pressuring Home Depot
to stop advertising on Fox News.
The fact that this campaign is necessary is a measure of how much our society
has fallen under the control of business. To restore democracy is to strip
business of its power.
KBR was going to charge the Bush forces $110 million for
maintaining bases that were already closed.
The Bush forces would object to this, if they wanted to save money.
The inter-group killing in Iraq continues to increase. The Bush forces are
unable to stop it, and their temporary alliances backfire.
Ethiopia's main opposition leaders have been
sentenced to life in prison.
An earthquake in Japan caused
a fire in a nuclear power plant. Due to the earthquake damage, the firemen
were busy elsewhere, so they could not come immediately to put out the fire.
Japan is building lots more nuclear power plants, and their plan seems like
foolish disregard for danger.
The insurance industry says that single-payer health care means long waits
to see a doctor and rationing of health care. Actually the US system is worse
on precisely these measures.
US citizens: phone your congressional reps and senators
to oppose Senator Coburn's amendment to increase the federal
penalties on medical marijuana users.
Jonathan Aponte had a man shoot him so he would not be sent back to Iraq.
Of foreigners fighting against the Bush forces,
nearly half are Saudis.
The Bush forces want to claim that they come from Syria and Iran, which seems
to be a matter of blaming the usual suspects.
President Chavez wants to amend the Venezuelan constitution so he can
run for president again.
This is not necessarily bad, but it is disturbing.
The FBI exceeded the sweeping surveillance power given to it by the USAP
AT RIOT to obtain people's phone records through requests that were obviously
illegal. These requests were signed by someone fairly high in the FBI.
The false information in these requests could make them a crime.
In 2001,
the Bush regime explicitly funded the Taliban.
Michael Moore lambastes CNN for absurd false statements about SiCKO.
Russia has canceled a treaty about reporting troop movements.
Elsewhere I read that this was a response to Bush's
provocative missile defense plans.
The deal to end North Korea's nuclear program is making tangible
progress.
The island nation of Tuvalu is slowly being drowned by global warming.
Most people there expect to emigrate.
It may be possible for 10,000 refugees to find a place to go. But if
climate change sends millions fleeing, a few decades from now, will
anyone let them in?
A Utah woman was attacked and then lied about by police who had come
to demand that she water her lawn.
Aside from the brutality, isn't it crazy to require
people to water lawns during a drought in a region
with a permanent water shortage that global warming will
keep making worse?
Interviews with 50 Bush forces veterans show a pattern of systematic
hatred and murderous violence towards Iraqi civilians — hardly
ever punished.
If someone says you should "support our troops", ask him if he
means supporting this.
As the US congress considers pulling the Bush forces out of Iraq,
"Iraqi" prime minister al Maliki says they can leave at any time.
The benchmarks that the "Iraqi" government is supposed to achieve
include passing the law handing over Iraq's oil wealth to foreigners.
Canada has prohibited protests in a wide area around a planned summit
with Bush. Even a meeting in a town hall in another town has been
prohibited. (I wonder how they can justify such a prohibition?)
They should hold the event anyway and dare the police to shut it down.
Various US companies are being sued for using paramilitaries
to kill union leaders in Colombia.
These companies plead they had no choice to pay off the paramilitaries
— that the paramilitaries would otherwise have attacked the
companies. That may be true, but it is a red herring. Just paying
off the paramilitaries to leave the companies alone would not have
motivated them to kill union leaders. The companies must have paid
extra for that.
One year after its abortive war with Hezbollah, Israel focuses on
asking why it didn't win, rather than on the most important question:
why did it fight a war?
If the United States Were A Free Country...
I agree with all except the part about firearms.
President Chavez wants to amend the Venezuelan constitution so he can
run for president again.
This is not necessarily bad, but it is disturbing.
The FBI exceeded the sweeping surveillance power given to it by the U
SAP AT RIOT to obtain people's phone records through requests that
were obviously illegal. These requests were signed by someone fairly
high in the FBI.
The false information in these requests could make them a crime.
In 2001, the Bush regime explicitly funded the Taliban.
Michael Moore lambasts CNN for absurd false statements about SiCKO.
Rep. Conyers talks of suspicion that half-pardoning Libby was a way to
keep him quiet so he would not implicate others in the Bush
administration.
Massachusetts governor Patrick vetoed plans to fund "sex education"
classes that only teach students not to have sex.
That is a step in the right direction, but doesn't go far enough. Sex
education should not spread the perverse idea that teens shouldn't
have sex. It should teach them how to have sex well.
France has admitted that a French judge was murdered in Djibouti, for
political reasons. Previously the French government covered this up and
called it suicide.
I have to recognize that in admitting this, Sarkozy (whose political policies
are detestable) is taking a step towards honesty.
The UK keeps deporting people to the Congo, refusing to recognize that
many of them are disappeared once they arrive.
The House of Representatives voted for withdrawal from Iraq by April, but
with a small margin that doesn't seriously threaten to stop Bush from doing
whatever he wants.
A Canadian court ruled that
prohibition of marijuana is unconstitutional.
A Florida Republican state representative was
arrested for soliciting for prostitution. Don't they pay representatives
enough?
I think he should be released, because prostitution and related activities
should not be prohibited -- just regulated for everyone's safety. However, as
a Republican, he deserves to be excoriated for his hypocrisy.
Global warming is
killing trout and salmon. They can't stand the higher temperatures. And
other fish are threatened by it too.
But this won't matter if we drive the fish to extinction through overfishing
quickly enough.
The Nation published reports by many Iraq veterans about the
systematically atrocities they witnessed or committed. "It's not individual
atrocity, it's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."
The systematic oppression, based on the attitude was that Iraqi lives counted
for nothing, is why I flatly reject any suggestion to "support" "our" troops.
The only support they deserve is to be pulled out of Iraq.
Luis Obrador, who was robbed of victory in Mexico's presidential election by
fraud,
continues to deny the legitimacy of President Calderon.
Six months ago, Bush supporters asked the public to
wait 6 months to judge the effects of his troop increase in Iraq (which he
called the "surge").
They have been saying similar things for three years or more, and they
probably are saying the same things now. They will keep saying forever,
"Don't judge yet." It's up to the people to refuse them any more time-outs.
The Australian government refused to publish a study about reaction to
changed labor laws, saying that providing this information to the citizens
would risk influencing how people vote in the next election.
Solar activity has been going down ever since 1980, so it can't be to
blame for global warming.
We are fortunate that a slightly cooling Sun has counteracted some of our CO2
and methane emissions, but the rising temperatures show that our emissions
outweigh the Sun's cooling.
The former Surgeon General says Bush politicized his job.
Bush proposes to replace him with
a religious fanatic who tries to "cure" gays.
China's former chief food and medicine regulator was executed for
corruptly authorizing unsafe products.
The death penalty is never justified; he should have been sentenced to many
years in prison. However, even strict punishment of a few leaders will not
alone suffice to make products safe. That requires an end to the culture of
secrecy which pervades China from the top down.
The conditions asked of the Iraqi government, for continued support from
the Bush regime, are impossible.
Maybe that is a good thing. To require these conditions is, in effect, a way
of cutting off support, which is what ought to be done.
A strange reversal:
Bush says that Bush forces troop levels "will be decided by commanders on
the ground, not by politicians in Washington DC".
If that's true, it will be the first time, since previously two politicians,
Bush and Cheney, have overruled the generals.
US citizens: phone your senators and say they should oppose Bush's nominee for
surgeon general. He is a religious fanatic that wants to "convert" gays.
See
this for more info.
Ethiopians who protested election fraud may face execution.
Iran has slowed down uranium enrichment, perhaps offering a deal.
I don't think Bush wants a deal; I think he wants an excuse for another war.
But maybe his support has eroded to the point where he will have to make the
deal.
South Africa is proposing a deal to rescue Zimbabwe from dictatorship and
collapse.
The Pakistani army stormed the mosque which was the base of fundamentalist
vigilantes.
New York's mayor wants 3,000 surveillance cameras, using terrorism as the
excuse. But the crucial part of the scheme is that they would record all
cars' license plates.
Having cameras to make recordings, that can be checked if crimes are committed
is useful, and I have nothing against it. Constant surveillance of everyone
is another matter: that must be fought.
As Republicans start to criticize Bush, he follows his usual strategy:
press on as if nothing had happened.
I predict that if laws require a reduction in the Bush forces in Iraq, he will
write a signing statement saying he doesn't have to obey them.
An ACLU lawsuit against Bush's illegal telephone surveillance was dismissed
on the grounds that none of the plaintiffs could prove he had been spied on.
Since the secret spy program doesn't say who it spies on, nobody can
demonstrate he was a target. Under this Kafkaesque legal doctrine, this means
nobody can ever sue, so secret spying can be done without limits.
Local opposition has blocked the expansion of several UK airports, thus
helping to make the government's supposed CO2 plans a reality.
But the Clown has plans to "streamline" the approval process, which would
strip local people of legal authority over all sorts of projects, from
airports to shopping malls.
US citizens: phone your congresscriter and say,
"Please vote for Rep. Hinchey's medical marijuana amendment
to the 'Justice' Department spending bill." This amendment
would prohibit the Dept of Injustice from spending money
arresting people that use medical marijuana in accord with
state law.
As Shell tramples the Irish, and ignores laws, to build a dangerous
natural gas refinery in Ireland, a broad-based protest campaign
continues to block construction, even though their government
is against them.
I'm sure that there is a safe way to build this refinery. I am sure
it would still be profitable if built safely. And I'm sure Shell's
attitude is that they want the maximum profits, and people's health be
damned.
2000 Chinese officials broke the one-child law in just one province. And
that counts only the ones who were investigated for corruption for other
reasons.
I wonder what fraction of the officials investagated had broken this law. But
it may not matter a lot, since the main point of the law is to cut down on
population growth. If it is only 90% enforced, that is still very effective.
The vice president of the "Iraqi" government called on citizens to arm
themselves, admitting the government can't protect them.
This is ironic because (1) Iraq is full of arms, (3) lots of Iraqis have arms,
and (3) the Bush forces have been trying to take them away.
Several Senate Republicans have called for a plan to reduce troops in the Bush forces.
It is a small step in the right direction. However, I think that Bush will stonewall them until pushed hard.
Police in Spokane attacked a man who was picknicking after a protest, after he asked for a policeman's badge number. Then they went wild and grabbed everyone they could get.
As Israel sentences Mordechai Vanunu to prison for giving interviews
that included no nuclear secrets, Pakistan is relaxing the restrictions
on AQ Khann,
whose old network may still be selling nuclear secrets.
While Bush calls himself "the decider",
Cheney often controls
the options among which he decides.
Note how he worked around Bush's opposition on the details of tax cuts
for the rich.
This makes the impeachment of Cheney important, just like the
impeachment of Bush.
Just after Israeli independence, the Israeli army carried out a
systematic campaign of destroying the (pre-Zionist) past. Antiquities
destroyed or sacked included mosques, synagogues, crusader fortresses,
museums and their collections, and carvings 3,000 years old.
90% of the Israeli settlements in Palestine have taken over land which
isn't officially theirs;
while leaving disused most of the
Palestinian land which the Israeli government says it gave them.
Temperate forests are less effective than thought at absorbing CO2,
while
tropical forests have been doing more than was previously realized.
This is bad news, because there is disastrous deforestation in many
tropical forests -- for instance, in Indonesia and Brazil.
Remember al-Zarqawi, who was supposed to be "the" leader of Al Qa'ida
in Iraq? The
Bush forces actively exaggerated his importance for
years -- and misleading Americans was part of the goal.
Meanwhile, internally they recognized that he and Al Qa'ida were a
small part of the Iraqi resistance.
Think about this when the Bush forces say that their enemies in Iraq
are "Al Qa'ida".
Arctic ponds are evaporating due to global warming.
Some areas have dried out to the point where plants can no longer grow
or absorb any CO2; and the next lightning could set them on fire,
releasing all their CO2 into the atmosphere.
Southern Greenland's ice sheet has survived previous warm periods
without melting.
This is good news, since it suggests we're not in danger of a total
melt soon. But a partial melt of up to half the sheet's thickness,
which is what the article says did happen,
would raise sea level 11
feet.
Global warming will increase death rates in the US.
China's test of an antisatellite weapon has raised
fears of conflict
in space. It also added to the dangerous inventory of space junk.
The exact same criticisms applied to the US test of an antisatellite
weapon, many years ago. At least China used an obsolete satellite as
a target. The target destroyed in the US test was in active use by
scientists, who were puzzled when it ceased transmitting.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and an arms race in space is not
safety. However, if the next US administration is more reality-based
than the present one, this test could perhaps provide it with an
incentive to agree to mutual ASAT disarmament.
Professor Fernandez-Armesto, while attending a conference in Atlanta,
was arrested for jaywalking,
then beaten up by the policeman.
The police investigation that tried to put the blame on the professor
is evidently dishonest. It says he "acted with belligerence", but
even supposing this really occurred, what could that have been? Only
verbal behavior is plausible, since if he had hit the policeman, more
serious charges would have been filed. And being verbally attacked is
no excuse to hit someone -- not even if you're a policeman.
So we see this is a distraction, an attempt to prejudice the real
issue by making the professor look bad. Since fabricating accusations
is standard police practice, I don't even believe it is true.
Global warming is rapidly melting the glaciers of Mount Everest. In
the short term,
new lakes threaten disastrous floods for the Sherpas
that live around it, if melting ice lets the water spills downhill.
In the long term, decreased rainfall in the area threatens drought for
hundreds of millions of people.
Berlusconi used Italy's military intelligence as a secret police
to spy on judges that did not support him politically.
An Australian minister made a mistake, and
admitted that the Bush
forces are occupying Iraq for the oil.
A victory for the Bush forces: they killed Said Hamza, an alleged Al
Qa'ida officer in Iraq --
for the second time!
Now we know why the war is going so badly: Bush's enemies are immortal.
Or do they have nine lives, like cats?
A youth of age 17 and another of age 15 had sex; for this exchange of
pleasure, the former has been
sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Humans at age 15 are sexually mature. To punish them, or their
partners, is insane prudery turned cruel. This sort of injustice is
not unusual; what is news is that there are protests against it.
I suspect that the underlying cause of this cruelty can be found in
the irrational tendency of most parents in our society towards denial
about the maturation of their offspring. However, Christianity
makes it worse.
US economic hit men have gun-wielding hit men to accompany them, and
their work is
not limited to foreign countries.
Former Ambassador Murray accuses the Bush regime of deliberately
fomenting intersectarian violence in Iraq. And Dennis Kucinich is
trying to investigate it.
I have no proof that the Bush forces directly carried out false-flag
massacres which were blamed on Iraqis. But I would not put this past
them. And some evidence is quite suggestive, such as that of the
British Bush forces troops who were arrested in Basra with supplies
for "terrorist" bombings. (The Bush forces attacked the jail to bust
them out, so that they could not confess.)
Meanwhile, simply recruiting an army of Shi'ites to occupy the Sunni
regions of Iraq was plenty of provocation for intersectarian violence.
If the Bush regime did this deliberately, what does that imply? It is
a shame to let such a tactic succeed, but Iraq is already coming
apart. It is too late to keep Iraq united, and trying to do so will
only prolong the civil war. Only defended boundaries can end the
killing.
The bald eagle has recovered from near extinction, and has been
removed from the list of threatened species.
This shows that we can prevent extinction; when we make
substantial efforts. Thousands of species face extinction, mostly due
to habitat destruction and pollution. We could save them too, if we
made it a priority.
UNESCO has
removed the Florida Everglades from its list of threatened sites,
but the Everglades are not safe.
However, if sea levels keep rising due to global warming, protecting the
Everglades may be as futile as protecting the rest of Florida.
Senator Spector introduced a
bill to instruct courts
to ignore presidential "signing statements".
France has moved to a free market for electricity --
a move that can
cause major problems.
An increase in the price of electricity is not necessarily a bad thing
in itself. But I would rather bring it about by taxing only
generators that burn fuel and emit pollution.
Government mistreatment of the citizens of New Orleans continues
and is much worse than we read about shortly after the hurricane.
This article puts it all together.
Christian fundamentalists are
openly scheming to impose Bible-based
law on the US--just as cruel and vicious as Islamic law.
Their lack of contact with reality can be seen in their claim that
secular culture has "deadly effects"--when all they mean is that we do
not execute homosexuals, etc. There is a part of our culture that has
the deadly effects: the part that worships the Invisible Hand. But these
fundamentalists don't care about that.
Iraqi Kurdistan may be mostly peaceful,
but its rule is not just.
Much like the Bush regime, it imprisons people without trial (even
taking hostages), and tortures them.
Bush hopes that allowing occasional television watching and gardening
for some prisoners in Guantanamo will make the world accept
imprisonment without charges or trial.
Several of the Bush regime's
nastiest policies were formulated by
Cheney, who handed them privately to Bush for signature, bypassing the
officials (even cabinet members) who thought they had the
responsibility.
Cheney was directly involved in
establishing policies of torture.
Cheney's secret influence has
led even Republican stalwarts to condemn
him.
That Ashcroft and Powell were bypassed does not absolve them of
responsibility for the policies that Cheney designed and Bush
approved. They did go along with the decisions once they were
imposed. If they had taken moral exception, they could have resigned
instead.
Rather than close the Guantanamo prison, let's make it over to house
Bush and Cheney, and other Bush regime officials who have betrayed the
freedom of the Land of the Free. But only after fair trials, of
course.
The Bush regime's policy of disinformation about climate change
was
set up directly by Cheney, and implemented by the White House.
Some Bush forces
marines may face murder charges for shooting helpless
prisoners in Fallujah.
It is right to hold those individuals responsible for their actions,
but that is not enough. The officers who established the spirit which
encouraged such crimes must also be held responsible. And since these
murders resulted from Bush's initial crime, the invasion of Iraq,
he must be held responsible too.
Germany takes the predatory cult of Scientology so seriously that it
has refused to cooperate with plans by Tom Cruise to make a movie,
saying that giving him this cooperation would be endorsing the cult.
Hear, hear!
Hillary Clinton's "key strategic adviser" worked for years to
improve
the image of tobacco companies.
Arnold Schwarzenegger poses as a champion of strong measures to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
In private, he has sabotaged their
implementation,
say people who used to be part of the committee in charge of them.
Pollution kills
750 thousand Chinese every year.
The Chinese government, following its typical culture of denial,
tried to publish a much smaller figure.
The
attempted bombings in London are attributed to
two Iraqis angry about the destruction of their country.
Proponents of the so-called "war on terror" say that fanatical
Islamists will be a threat regardless of what the West does. I am
sure there is a core group of which that is true. However, Western
atrocities -- such as the occupation of Iraq, which is a fresh
atrocity each day it continues -- make a big difference to how much
support those fanatics can attract.
Pakistan's Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhury, was fired by Musharraf
for investigating corruption.
He has since become the focus of
opposition to Musharraf from all sides.
Although the defense of certain human rights that his cause has
inspired is exciting, I wonder what the position of his supporters
would be on Pakistan's unjust laws, such as capital punishment for
blasphemy, and punishment of women for reporting they were raped.
The trial of the killers of Hrant Dink is
exposing the involvement
of the Turkish government in his killing.
The government of
France supported the genocidal Rwandan regime, on
the express orders of President Mitterand, who acted out of the
shallowest form of nationalistic rivalry.
There were several terrorist failed attacks in the UK recently. The
perpetrators had done nothing in advance to call attention to
themselves, but once the attacks failed, the whole ring was very
quickly caught.
Rationally speaking, these events oppose Brown's plans to further
weaken human rights in the UK. But I fear that Brown will use them to
increase the irrational pressure for his agenda.
As Bush labels the enemy in Iraq "Al Qa'ida",
he continues
boosting its strength.
Gordon Brown has proposed constitutional reforms in the UK
which look like improvements.
One of them, regarding the law that prohibits protests near
Parliament, proposes to reverse one of B'liar's nasty actions.
Now if only Brown wanted to reverse B'liar's other attacks on
human rights.
Bush half-pardoned Scooter Libby, by commuting his jail sentence.
Bending over backwards to be sympathetic to a person who lied to protect
Cheney from investigation illustrates Bush's attitude towards honesty
and towards justice.
Mordechai Vanunu has been sentenced to prison for the crime of
speaking to foreign journalists.
Vanunu says he knows no remaining nuclear secrets (and certainly his
interviews did not contain any). He says that this excuse masks a
desire to keep him from talking about how he was treated.
Students are organizing political education in campus "Tent State
University" projects, in the US and the UK.
Human Rights Watch says that both Israeli shelling and Palestinian rockets
violate the laws of war.
The Senate is ready to go to court if Bush and Cheney continue
refusing to turn over documents about the firing of federal prosecutors.
"Bush's Amazing Achievement": scholars of foreign policy agree his
presidency is a disaster.
However, the deeper disagreements are just as important as the
agreement. Right-wing scholars call the Bush presidency a disastrous
mistake, while others recognize that the problem goes beyond
mere execution, and extends to the goals.
How the Bush regime planned to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to
attack Iraq, as early as the following day -- and relentlessly pressured the CIA to endorse the lie.
NATO attacks in Afghanistan killed 45 civilians, creating anger and bringing a rebuke from President Karzai.
I will be surprised if the US obeys his command to get permission
before attacks.
In Bethlehem, nonviolent protestors trying to plant trees on their own
land were attacked.
One of the protestors at the regular Bil'in nonviolent protest
was an Israeli soldier, off duty.
Aaron Lapid reports on what he saw while visiting a checkpoint in Palestine,
which was even worse than what he saw as a soldier in the occupation.
An official in the "Iraqi" government accuses the Bush regime of organizing
a false-flag "terrorist" attack.
I cannot judge the plausibility of this accusation, but given that
al-Saberi has the job of negotiating with tribal leaders, the fact
that he makes this accusation is shocking whether it is true or false.
An ACLU lawsuit has obtained a manual produced by the Bush regime
giving directions for excluding opposition from government events.
The US government is fabricating "preexisting condition" excuses
to deny disability benefits to Iraq veterans with PTSD.
Enormous corruption is now visible in UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Bush pretends that the Iraqi resistance is Al Qa'ida.
The US Supreme Court ruled to allow manufacturers to set minimum retail prices -- sometimes. (It is not clear when.)
By tossing out a century of past Supreme Court precedent, for no
particular reason, this court shows it is on a political mission which
it will stop at nothing to achieve. That mission was given to it by
the Republican Party, so we can expect it to be for business, against
democracy, and against human rights.
Google is being sued for libel in the UK over the contents of web
pages that are indexed in the search engine.
UK's libel laws give insufficient weight to freedom of speech.
Attempts to globalize them to the entire net threaten the freedom of speech
everywhere in the world.
Most US presidential candidates endorse protection for medical marijuana when
it is legalized by states. Details are given
here.
Among Democrats, the only exception is Hillary Clinton, by far the worst of
the Democratic candidates.
Around 120 women per year are killed in the UK by their relatives
for choosing the wrong man to love. Some are now saved by charities
that work to protect them.
US awareness of the threat of global warming is rising, but still lags
behind most of the world.
I see in this the effect of the corporate-controlled media in the US. That
problem is not unique to the US, but in most countries it is less complete.
Congress reports that the Bush regime is blowing hot air when it talks
about training Iraqi troops to fight for Bush.
What the report does not question is the basic assumption that Iraqis ought to
fight for a conquering foreign empire.
After the Yes Men hoaxed ExxonMobil,
the company struck back--shutting
off their internet service. They could only get back partial service by
deleting this hoax, and deleting all mention of Exxon. They are now seeking
another ISP.
Such intimidation gives major corporations the effective power of censorship
over the Internet.
Amy Goodman interviews
Michael Moore about SiCKO.
The inspiration came when NBC's censors changed the outcome of his "Health
Care Olympics" between the US, Canada and Cuba, because "Cuba is not allowed
to win".
Four years after the looting of the National Museum of Iraq, the Bushmen have
started trying to
examine and preserve some of the country's archeological sites, many of
which have themselves been ruined by looting.
NASA's Earth science budget is down 30% since 2000. Key satelites that are
aging have no planned replacements.
Bush has already said he wants to make sure his successor cannot end the
occupation of Iraq. Maybe he is trying to make sure his successor cannot do
anything about global warming, either.
China is already the
principal producer of CO2 emissions.
San Diego is starting to think about what rising seas will do to low-lying
real estate and buildings. But awareness that beachfront property will be
inundated is just starting to sink in.
B'liar, no longer prime minister of the UK, will try to
negotiate peace between Palestine and Israel.
Given his slavish obedience to Bush, the Palestinians will not regard him as
anything but a tool.
The president of Mexico, despite his bad politics in general, is
trying to fight police corruption caused by drug trafficking.
The root cause of this problem is the high drug prices caused by prohibition,
and the only solution is to end prohibition. Addictive drugs such as heroin
and cocaine should be made available to addicts in doctors' offices, as in the
Netherlands.
Iran has begun
rationing of gasoline.
Rationing may not be the best way to do it, but higher gasoline prices are
essential for conservation -- in Iran as in the US. Some European countries
have prices over 6 dollars per gallon due to their taxes; before recent price
increases, it was 4 dollars per gallon. Over the years, this leads to
building society's infrastructure so that people use less gasoline.
The Senate has issued a subpoena for documents pertaining to Bush's
decision to carry out illegal surveillance.
The medical industry is launching an
organized PR effort to counter the film SiCKO.
Uri Avnery:
splitting Gaza and the West bank is a strategy that Israel has practiced
for many years. The probable effect will be to cost Fatah and Abbas their
remaining support.
Blackstone and Capital's Scam.
Where will Iraq, its refugees go next?
Senator Gravel writes, "Why Hillary Scares Me".
US and Afghan troops tied a prisoner to a jeep and threatened to drag him
(to death) if he didn't talk.
These are not isolated instances. We know that the practice of abusing (i.e.
torturing) prisoners was promoted from the very top.
Will Bush use the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to push for a troop
increase in Iraq?
There is the Big Brother-- Workplace Control and Workforce Surveillance.
Kasparov is effective as a dissident in Russia, criticizing Putin's
assault on democracy. However, outside of that, his politics are those of a
neocon.
Support the Confederation of Immokalee Workers in pressuring Burger King
to give farm workers decent treatment.
US citizens: contact your congresscritter and senators to
support low-power FM radio.
An undercover journalist reports on how lobbyists (usually former
government staff) corrupt politicians, academia and the press to whitewash
evil governments.
UN support for the occupation of Iraq has cast suspicion over the UN,
costing it the ability to act in other parts of the world.
A Washington woman says her cell-phone is being cracked remotely, and used
to spy on her and to send threats.
This is one reason why the software in cell phones must be free software. If
you use non-free software, the developer controls it and you don't.
Congress is investigating the practices of government agencies' inspectors
general. As part of Bush's War on Integrity, they have been politicized and
suppressed.
Cheney twists the law to keep secrets without following legal rules about
government secrets.
Canada is considering a
law to subordinate its government policies to the US, and to allow US
companies to sue to overturn any regulations that get in their way.
The Bush forces have begun to label the Iraqi resistance as "Al Qa'ida".
Just as Bush tried to tie Saddam Hussein to Al Qa'ida before the invasion, now
he wants to tie present-day Iraqi opposition to Al Qa'ida. It's a
crude scheme to manipulate Americans' hatred.
Bush's spokesman says that killing a million Iraqis is ok because Saddam
Hussein did the same sort of thing.
Saddam did kill many Iraqis, but he wasn't killing a lot of them in 2003.
Karl Rove told the Interior Department to change policy so as to get a
Republican senator re-elected. This appears to be illegal.
US citizens:
call your congresscritter to support HR 1246, which calls for the US
military to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
It is not a good thing for the US military to be strong, since their strength
would serve for aggression. However, the recruiting crisis brought about by
the occupation of Iraq could be a good opportunity to repeal this biggoted
policy.
How Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan
corrupted the FDA to approve aspartame, overcoming a previous rejection
due to evidence it might be dangerous to health.
Whether aspartame is indeed dangerous is an unsettled question.
Mahmoud Abbas is trying to use the sudden influx of foreign support to
demand negotiations for a real peace agreement.
A review of SiCKO, Michael Moore's latest film.
Part II.
Al Gore's event to raise climate change awareness is being seized on by
corporate greenwashers.
Cheney says his office is not part of the executive branch, so laws about
it don't apply to him.
Next he will say he's really on a different planet so Earthly law doesn't
apply to him.
Tax resisters in New Hampshire vow to die rather than surrender to the
police.
There are many things that the state ought to provide, such as roads, medical
care, sewage disposal and treatment, inspection and enforcement of health
standards, etc., and this needs money; a progressive income tax that falls
most heavily on the rich is the fairest way to collect it. In a state that
spent its money on these things, I would not sympathize with tax resisters.
However, it is hard for me to criticize people that refuse to hand over their
money for wars of conquest, kidnaping, imprisonment without trial, and torture.
Giuliani's favorite vulture makes big profits from US debt that is going
to be "forgiven" to poor countries.
Senators demanded a Justice Dept. investigation Into Tim Griffin's
voter-suppression.
As former prosecutor Tim Griffin is investigated for caging
voters, a path towards inculpating Karl Rove is starting to open up.
The FBI may have let Osama bin Laden charter a plane
in the US after 9/11.
China has developed mobile execution vans to make executions more efficient.
They take organs from the cadavers and sell them for transplantation. You can read about it here and here
The practice of executing people to collect organs was predicted in
Larry Niven's stories in the 60s, except that those stories envisioned
it in the US and done with popular support from people who thought
they might someday need transplants.
Shin Dong Hyok has escaped, at age 22, from the North Korean political
prison camp in which he was born and lived his whole life.
North Korea provides an example of how sometimes one must work with
even the most brutal dictators. Ending the North Korean nuclear
program is very important, and I think it is justified for the US to
cooperate with North Korea towards that end, even though that means
tolerating the regime's atrocities.
But would the US care about those atrocities even this overriding
concern were not present? The Bush regime doesn't imprison babies as
far as I know -- well, perhaps occasionally as hostages -- and it may
never have done anything as heinous as what was done to Mr Shin. But
it does things in the same spirit, and the result is to disqualify
the US today from being taken seriously in any moral criticism of
other countries' atrocities.
The murderous and intolerant side of Islam showed itself again after Salman Rushdie was knighted by the UK. Protestors called for killing him, and so did a minister in the Pakistani government.
No one has an inherent right to an honor such as a knighthood, and if
a writer's work expressed hatred towards people who hold a certain
view on religion, whether it be Muslims or Christians or Atheists, I
would urge governments and others not to give awards to that writer.
I have not read The Satanic Verses, but according to descriptions I
have read, it does nothing of the kind. It does not condemn Muslims,
or Islam. Rather, a character has a strange dream into which Mohammed
enters. This is what the fanatical Muslims condemn. When intolerant
Muslims think that everyone in the world should be forced to bow down
to their religion, they deserve a firm and unwavering rebuke.
Furthermore, we should take the initiative in this debate, by pointing
out that many Muslim countries
do not respect other views on religion even to the point of
permitting people to adopt them.
Psychosocial Causes for the Palestinian Factional War.
The US foreign service is destroying itself by suspending security
clearances based on the vaguest of suspicions.
Bush's War on Integrity has spread to NASA.
I doubt that Bush specifically asked for this, or for the
mismanagement of NASA. But it comes out of the general climate
of corruption that Bush has established.
Instead of managing NASA, the Bush administration's priority is to
investigate the employees more.
Despite protection of the forests where the endangered spotted owl lives,
the species continues to decline. For the Bush regime, that suggests
cutting down some of those forests.
Exporting industry to China increased its CO2 output
even as it reduced workers wages.
Man-made soot contributes to warming of the Arctic, just by
making the snow dirty. Thus, the soot and the CO2 add together
to create danger of melting icecaps.
A report summarizes how the Bush forces are destroying Iraq.
A man who put a note saying "Kip Hawley Is An Idiot"
(that's the head of the TSA) on his plastic bag of liquids
was treated like a criminal by the TSA.
This was, in effect, perfect proof that the TSA attacks those who
criticize it, even in the total absence of any legitimate reason to do
so.
The TSA's response to subsequent inquiries followed the standard
dishonest rule of unjust government: admit nothing, deny everything,
make counterallegations.
Mugabe, effectively dictator of Zimbabwe, plans to authorize universal police eavesdropping.
Sounds like Bush.
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security made the US vulnerable to alien insect agricultural pests that can destroy architecture.
The Italian government is trying to stop the case against the CIA
and Italian kidnapers of Abu Omar.
Aung San Suu Kyi, elected president of Burma, has been in prison for
over 11 years.
General Taguba, who was in charge of the investigation of torture in
Abu Ghraib prison, said that he was ordered not to investigate
the role of higher-ups who authorized it.
Leading climate scientists predict disaster for civilization
if CO2 production is not checked within the next decade.
More information here.
A wave of phony democracy has spread through the Arab world,
carrying with it disillusionment with the idea of democracy.
The only opposition Arabs consider sincere is Islamist.
The democratic system of the US is pretty phony too.
California is considering bills to limit use of RFIDs.
These bills do not go far enough. It should be illegal to put an RFID
in any product unless its main purpose is for the purchaser to
identify herself, and any RFID in packaging should be clearly marked.
US citizens: write or phone your congresscritter to support the
amendment to protect users of medical marijuana.
This amendment would prohibit the DEA from spending any money
to target them in states where that use is lawful.
Putin is guilty, as far as I can tell, of suppressing political
opposition and the independent press. I certainly do not support him.
However, what he says and does in dealing with Bush is right on.
Another Russian journalist was shot by an unknown assailant.
The journalist wasn't killed, because the gun had a rubber bullet.
I guess this was meant as a warning to stop investigating.
Karl Rove is being investigated for violating the Presidential Records
Act by deleting emails. The Bush campaign organization refuses
to cooperate with the investigation, which in itself shows what Bush
supporters are made of.
The people who did this may have committed crimes. In addition, since
this law makes the president personally responsible for assuring
compliance, he shares in the personal responsibility for the
deliberate circumvention of the law.
This alone would be enough reason to impeach him, but since Congress
has closed its eyes to so many bigger reasons already, I don't suppose
it will do so.
Democracy in Palestine was formally suppressed as President Abbas
instituted an "emergency government", setting aside the elected Hamas
government.
Israel and the US have been trying to put an end to democracy in
Palestine ever since the Palestinians didn't vote the way they
were supposed to.
The Yes Men, posing as representatives of ExxonMobil,
presented a plan to make petroleum out of corpses
after coming environmental disasters.
Remember, "xx" is not pronounced like "x".
It is pronounced like the "ch" in German "ach".
Thus, the first syllable of "Exxon" sounds like
an expression of disgust.
Rumsfeld and others lied to Congress when they denied knowledge of
torture in Abu Ghraib, says General Taguba.
Isn't it a crime to lie when testifying to Congress?
Coca Cola is using vague promises of an ILO investigation in Colombia
to convince universities to quash the achievements of student
campaigns. The ILO is accused of not being independent of the
company, and the investigation may not really be occurring at all.
Microsoft is making a sneak attack on election law in New York State.
Now that Bush has decided that Al Qassim is innocent of the charges
for which he was imprisoned in Guantanamo for years, the US wants to
transfer him to a prison in Libya. He is fighting this because he
thinks the Libyan prison could be worse.
The US has a long history of crushing democracy in the Middle East.
This article doesn't even mention the many Arab dictators
that the US has supported and continues to support.
During the cold war, the argument was made that the US could not
afford to be choosy about allies against the Soviet Union. That might
have justified working in some ways with some dictators that were
already established, but it couldn't possibly justify installing a
dictator in place of a democracy as in Iran.
Hundreds of thousands protested again in Oaxaca, and rebuilt the
barricades of last year.
Here's a review of the history of a year of protest in Oaxaca -- how
the police attacked the protest, and how later protestors (and mere
bystanders) have been tortured in prison.
Chiquita Banana pled guilty to using death squads in Colombia to kill
union organizers. Now the victims' families are suing the company.
US military chaplains published antisemitic lesson plans.
Eric Montanez was arrested in Orlando...for giving away food
to homeless people.
Orlando's policy reflects the essential cruelty of a political system
that puts business profit above human well-being.
Robert Fisk: Palestine -- a coup d'etat by an elected government.
A UN report criticizes the UK's movement towards a police state.
Bush is against a Congressional proposal to protect reporters
(including even bloggers) from revealing confidential sources.
This from an administration constantly involved in covering up crimes.
Torture Gonzales is being investigated for obstruction of justice.
The US bullied Berkeley High School into helping army recruiters get
access to its students. But the school continues to resist: it made
sure that every student and every parent considered the possibility of
opting out. 90% of the students have opted out already.
Every high school in the US should do the same. US military
recruiters are known to lie frequently, and those recruited nowadays
are more likely to serve in wars of aggression than to "serve their
country" in any way.
Uri Avnery confirms that the US and Israel were directly involved in
provoking the fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah.
Hamas and Fatah are now openly at war. Hamas has captured Gaza,while in the West Bank, Fatah has arrested members of Hamas.
This article claims that the US directly arranged the violence through Palestinians it supports.
I don't know whether the facts stated there are accurate. In any case, it seems that the blockade by Israel the US helped bring this about. However, Palestinians can't escape their share of the blame.
Global warming has enabled mountain pine beetles to spread northward and upward, attacking other species of pine trees, which could be wiped out.
If the white pine high in the mountains are killed, that will exacerbate the water shortage that the West is going to face due to other effects of global warming.
If Jamil el-Banna is released from Guantanamo, the UK plans not to let him return, on the grounds he has "been away too long". Instead, he may be sent to Jordan where he faces torture or death.
B'liar, on TV, still pretends that his war is not unpopular.
His motto seems to be, "The show must go on."
A Pentagon report shows Bush's troop increase in Iraq has not achieved its goal.
It is absurd to blame al Maliki personally for failing to reconcile Iraq's ethnic groups and sects. Under Bush occupation, that task is essentially impossible. So he is being used as a fall guy. Well, if that leads to ending the war, that is ok. With his participation in the Iraqi government, he is hardly innocent.
I suspect that the "promises" referred to in the article include the planned passage of a law to hand over Iraq's oil to Western oil companies, presumably owned by Bush cronies. The Iraqi parliament has been working on this law for months or years. I wonder if it is doing this the way Penelope made her wedding dress.
The Somali "interim government" has been unable to establish control despite Ethiopian and US military support. As a result, the country is in chaos, making some Somalis yearn for the days of the Islamic Courts, which were the only force able to restore order.
The Ethiopian intervention was supposed to last a short time, but it is becoming permanent (as I predicted).
Somalia faces a very sad choice: between violent chaos and cruel, unjust Islamic law.
A series of murders of members of the Lebanese Parliament seems to be due to Syria, since all the victims are supporters of the pro-American prime minister.
Almost 1/3 of the shareholders of ExxonMobil voted for a resolution calling on the company to work to reduce CO2 emissions.
Even though it didn't pass, it may pass next year. It also could lead the management to start thinking; if anything can do that.
The House of Lords has made a final decision that prisoners
held by British units in the Bush forces are covered by
the Human Rights Act
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Since the government advised soldiers to disregard that law, it now faces an investigation that may blow the lid of part of B'liar's malice and cruelty.
Peak oil -- the plausible theory that a scarcety of petroleum
will drive prices way up starting a few years from now -- has finally
hit mainstream news.
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Sudan has agreed to a larger military force to prevent violence in Darfur.
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A secret UN report sees no prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine. It blames Israel for rejecting peace, the Palestinian Authority for being unable to stop attacks on Israel (never mind that these are not very dangerous nowadays), and the great powers for imposing sanctions against the Palestinians after they voted for Hamas.
A Bush regime spin machine has been saying that Iran
supports the Taliban. The Pentagon now says it isn't true at all.
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The FBI's "terrorist watch list" has over half a million names on it, making
it a cause of pointless harrassment and useless for any legitimate purpose.
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In Iraq, a Sunni mosque and a Shi'ite mosque were attacked.
Muqtada al Sadr called on Iraqis to unite and not fight each other.
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In Helmand provice, life for women is no better than when the Taliban
ruled.
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The Islamic extremists are already fighting a war against women. I think that Afghan women should start fighting back with guns. Rather than waiting to be shot, they should take the initiative. Burkhas should make it easy to get in position for a surprise attack. They will also make it impossible to identify who the attackers were, once they have gone.
Bush plans to cut down on satellites to measure Earth's climate.
One way or another, he's determined to prevent conservation.
Spewing sulfur into the upper atmosphere can prevent global warming cheaply.
But it can't prevent the droughts which CO2 is also causing, in places such as the US.
Open warfare has broken out in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah.
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A true follower of Bush, B'liar attacked the media for not giving
him a free pass.
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Putin has allowed some opposition protests to occur.
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He probably has realized that crushing small protests is not worth the criticism it brings. Having brought the media under control by assassination, he can get away with lies even if protestors point out the truth. It works for Bush in the US, where the mainstream media, without assassination of their reporters, are nearly as subservient.
The Italian trial of Abu Omar's kidnappers (US and Italian secret
agents) has begun, but Abu Omar cannot testify. Both Egypt and Italy have
prevented him from going to the trial.
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Professor Norman Finkelstein was offered tenure by DePaul University,
but then the university changed its mind because of a campaign
against his political views that criticize Israel.
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I am told that more info can be found in www.normanfinkelstein.com, but I have not seen that site.
Chinese law labels many activities "state secrets",
which is often the excuse to sentence political critics to prison.
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The US under Bush is following a similar path of secrecy, though it has not gone as far.
MacDonald's is trying to whitewash its image by inviting mothers to visit farms that grow ingredients.
Visiting a farm of MacDonald's' choice won't give them any real information. City folk like me, visiting a farm, don't know how to tell whether the farm's food is good to eat. But suppose it is: so what? Even a thorough study of farms that grow the wheat or lettuce, or potatoes and cattle, will have nothing to say about whether burgers make people fat.
But these mothers, given a free vacation and seeing something that looks nice, will have every reason to convince themselves that they have seen proof that MacDonald's food is good.
When Banaz Mahmod told police that her father wanted to kill her (for
having a boyfriend), the UK police did not believe her. Now her
father has been convicted of murder.
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Professor Colin Green explains the experiences in Palestine that led him to support an academic boycott of Israel. His union voted to start a year-long debate on the question. He says that Palestinians are enthusiastic about the debate, while Israel's supporters are angry that the idea is even considered.
Illegal logging in Indonesia will wipe out orangutans in the
wild in 10 years, along with the forests they live in.
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This is where the robot police airplanes ought to be used.
UK police are adapting drone aircraft to watch streets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
If they were only looking for ordinary criminals, I wouldn't mind this. But their focus is to catch people who do things that are slightly annoying -- as well as political opposition, of course.
The Bush forces say they are arming some Iraqi resistance groups,
hoping they will fight Al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I am a bit suspicious of this, because I thought there were lots of arms in Iraq. Meanwhile, the description of "negotiating" by arresting the other party's negotiators strikes me as negotiating in bad faith. Just like the Bush forces to arrest people who come out under a flag of truce.
Democrats in Congress are supporting abstinence-only antisex education, as part of a deal with the worst Republicans.
Pizza Hut fired the worker who reported mice to the health department.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Brian D. Kelly faces the threat of 7 years in prison for making an audio/video recording of a policeman who had pulled over a car. He's not the only one who has met with such threats in the US.
It is natural that police would want to stop citizens from recording what they do -- because mere eyewitness testimony isn't enough to get them convicted.
The median income of American families has declined since Bush stole the
presidency.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The sectarian war in Iraq is getting worse despite Bush's increase in troops,
so
Iraqis are still fleeing, if they can find a place to flee to. 4.2
million are now refugees.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A jury in the UK found two protestors not guilty for trying to damage a US
B52 bomber. It accepted their argument that they were trying to prevent a
bigger crime, which was to be committed using that bomber.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US and Iran have captured some of each others citizens,
making accusations of spying and intervention which might or
might not be fabricated.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Musharraf met with a partial setback in his attempts to gag the media
in Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Most of the US is suffering from a severe drought; in the West, this
drought has lasted for many years. It is probably due to global warming,
which is expected to make it get worse and worse.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The company building the US Embassy in Iraq has been accused of bringing in employees against their will. You can read about it here.
The "War on Drugs" continues ruining lives in the US. Bernie Ellis,
who grew marijuana to treat an uncurable chronic illness, has avoided
imprisonment due to tremendous community support. Now he faces
confiscation of his home.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
It must be even worse for James Burton, who is presumably going blind in prison because he can't grow pot there.
It is interesting to compare forfeiture (government seizure of assets, labeled as a punishment) in this with the case of the company that collects TV license payments in the UK. In both cases, punishments have been increased so as to collect more money. In one case, a company does it; in the other, a government agency does it; but what they do is the same.
However, most government agencies don't have a motivation to act this way. That's because the usual government agency is not terribly interested in collecting more money for the general treasury. That won't give the agency more money to spend.
The fact that forfeited assets directly enrich the police agency that collects them creates a special situation where there is an incentive for abuse. The point here is that privatization of collections can create the same special situation, and the same risk.
When Bush admitted using secret prisons, he said they had been closed.
But he appears to have been lying, as usual. Human Rights Watch
reports on 39 people that the US appears to have disappeared.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
In some cases the US taken young children hostage, and reportedly tortured them too.
Musharraf seems helpless against spreading Islamic fundamentalism
in Pakistan. You can read about it in this web page.
Hank Silver, an American Jew who helped build Israel in its early days,
went there again to observe the occupation of Palestine.
The Hebrew University appointed a former head of the security service as
its director of external relations, despite a petition signed by many
professors saying that this would contradict the humanistic mission and values
of the university.
Academics in other countries have already proposed a boycott of cooperation
with Israeli universities, and there is an argument about whether it is right
to have such a boycott. This appointment will strengthen the argument in
favor.
An Israeli argues that
the fundamental reason for various boycotts of Israel is that it is not a
democracy. It rules millions of Palestinians, who are not allowed to vote to
control the policies under which they are ruled.
Another Israeli recognizes the legitimacy of the boycott.
The Jews of Israel don't have to admit the Palestinians as voting citizens of
Israel. But they must respect the Palestinians' right to be voting citizens
of a sovereign, democratic state: if not Israel, then Palestine.
Blackwater is suing the families of four mercenaries who were killed in
Iraq. These families want information about how their relatives were killed,
information that might embarrass Blackwater. The company now aims to both
bankrupt them and gag them.
While fighting in in Iraq, these mercenaries were participating in an unjust
occupation. They were helping Blackwater do Bush's dirty work--something that
I would guess their families refuse to recognize. However, that is no excuse
for what Blackwater is doing to those families today. Following Cindy
Sheehan's path, their personal loss is leading them into opposition to the
empire. I hope they will not crack as she did.
The resolution to impeach Cheney now has seven sponsors.
That they are so few is a measure of the cowardice of Congressional Democrats.
US presidential candidates get away with lies in the debates, because the
mainstream media don't comment on the truth of what they say.
In the spirit of Krugman's point, we should note that Dubya did not get within
"chad-and-butterfly range" of winning the 2000 election. As Greg Palast
discovered and published, Katherine Harris stole the election for Bush by
disenfranchising tens of thousands of Black voters in Florida.
Krugman doubts that the US can survive four more years of Bush-quality
leadership. I don't think that the US has survived 6 years of leadership with
Dubya's level of patriotism. The US is not a collection of people, nor its
physical infrastructure. The US is a system of government based on human
rights. When Bush crushed basic human rights, with the support of most
Democrats in Congress, he destroyed the US. The question now is whether the
US can be resurrected.
I see little hope for it. The Republican candidates gloat about the
destruction of human rights, while the Democratic candidates -- aside from
Kucinich -- pay little attention to the question.
Religious
freedom vs fundamentalism.
China has evicted over a million residents of Beijing to demolish their
homes for the Olympics. They have to move to distant slum suburbs, from which
it is expensive to get to work.
In the US, gentrification does the same thing, but more slowly. It would be
acceptable if there were adequate housing for poor working people.
Uri Avnery:
40 years as an occupying power have corrupted Israeli society and
government, and made violence normal.
The law allowing members of parliament to be expelled for criticizing cabinet
ministers or army commanders will effectively abolish the representation of
Isreali Arabs -- and anyone that seriously wants peace. Their representatives
will either gag themselves, becoming ineffective, or be expelled.
This review of Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and Misinformation, by R.T.
Naylor, makes me want to read a copy.
US citizens: phone your congresscoward and say, "Support resolution 333 to
impeach Cheney! He's a criminal, and you have a responsibility to recognize
this by launching his prosecution."
One of Mugabe's conscripted torturers has escaped, and
explains how the system is organized for atrocities.
B'liar endorsed South African President Mbeki's gentle approach to
Mugabe's tyranny. (Mbeki has blocked most sorts of action against Mugabe for
years.)
It is interesting to contrast the attitude of B'liar and Bush toward Mugabe
with their attitude towards Saddam Hussein. Hussein's past atrocities were
used as the excuse for a war of conquest, but Mugabe's present and increasing
atrocities get only verbal criticism -- and now, not even that.
Bush wants to pardon Libby, but faces pressure from Republicans not to
do so.
We need a constitutional amendment that would deny the president the
power to pardon crimes that relate to working closely with high
government officials. I suggest that pardons for such crimes
be possible only for a president who took office at least 3 years
after the end of the administration that the crime was connected with.
Here's a way to educate the public about what global warming can do:
erect poles in coastal cities, showing heights above sea level. Each
pole could be graduated in meters, with a big label "If Greenland
Melts" on a line at the appropriate height (around 6 meters above
current sea level).
The IWW is organizing workers at Starbucks, which treats them
worse than Wal Mart.
Due to overfishing, jellyfish are proliferating in the Mediterranean
and regularly invade Spanish beaches.
The drought that exacerbates this problem is likely to get more severe
and more frequent in the future, due to global warming.
An Israeli court is hearing a Palestinian challenge to practices
that exclude Palestinians from a road running through the West Bank.
Restrictions like these have divided the West Bank into small enclaves,
making it difficult to travel between them.
Bush continues to oppose meaningful action against climate change.
At the G8 summit, he committed only to "consider" taking steps.
We can imagine the result this consideration will reach.
Thus, B'liar's claim to have influence over Bush is once again shown
false.
There is a time in diplomacy for patience, but there is also a time
for pressure and denunciation, and this is it. Other countries must
tell the truth about the Bush regime: that its policy is driving the
Earth to disaster.
While the G8 summit didn't achieve much good, protests against the
meeting were very effective.
Is inundating another country an act of war? If so, countries whose
coastal regions face inundation (if Greenland or Antartica melts)
could justify a pre-emptive attack on US and Chinese fossil fuel power
plants, oil refineries, coal mines, and other CO2-emitting facilities,
in the name of simple self-protection.
Taking the absurdity of software patents to its insane logical
extreme, a new company's business plan is to patent security fixes.
Mainstream Australian media companies accuse the government of
endangering the freedom of the press, and of practicing too much
secrecy.
US citizens: sign the petition demanding no pardon for Libby.
US citizens: sign the petition against the US plan for liquid coal, which would increase CO2 emissions.
The arms trade from the UK to Saudi Arabia involves payment
of bribes to a Saudi prince, authorized by the UK government.
B'liar blocked investigation into this corruption, which as much as
admits that the accusations, saying that this corruption is
"strategic". What he means is that "What's good for BAE arms sales
is good for the UK."
The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to investigate psychologists'
work in researching torture techniques for the US Army.
The rigging of the PENS report by people who concealed or hedged their
military affiliations reminds me of the way Communist infiltrators
used to take control of political opposition groups.
Cheney continues to repeat the lie about Saddam Hussein and al Qa'ida.
MIT economists confirm that US workers' income is not
increasing as their productivity rises -- and the reason is
due to changes that give bosses more power and workers less.
Congress is planning new farm subsidies, which seem likely
to favor large companies.
The Iraqi Parliament is trying to end the occupation
by blocking the UN approval for it. But Maliki, Bush's
Iraqi prime minister, plans to veto the bill.
The WWF has accepted a lot of money to advertise Coca Cola Corporation.
The UK company that has the commission to collect taxes for television
sets has tried to increase profits by demanding payment from people
whether they have television sets or not.
Politicians often argue for privatization of government functions,
claiming that businesses will run them more efficiently.
But businesses do not necessarily achieve higher profits through
doing the right job more efficiently. They are just as likely
to raise profits by doing the job wrong.
Glaciers in Antarctica are flowing faster into the ocean. This means
the danger of catastrophic flooding of coastal areas is worse than we
thought.
The US antimissile system which provokes Putin is being
imposed on an antagonistic Czech public.
The Czech leaders who support this are working for the US,
not for their own people.
B'liar is making one last try to influence Bush on climate change. I
wish him luck, but he has never succeeded in changing Bush's course
before.
What 40 years of occupation has done to Palestine, and to Israel.
The UK faces the threat of legal restrictions on abortion.
Yelena Tregubova says:
Putin is turning Russia into a dictatorship, and now wants to threaten
neighbors, so don't appease Russia.
I agree with her overall position, but I see the nuclear weapons issue
differently. Putin can't possibly threaten other countries as much as Bush
does, and it is Bush that wants to abandon arms control and destabilize the
nuclear balance. So I think it is right to interpret Russia's development of
advanced missiles as a response to Bush's provocation. If Russia did this in
the absence of US provocation, it would say more about Russia.
Since Chavez's opposition likes to compare him to Putin, it is informative to
contrast them. Putin has suppressed oppostion journalism by assassination of
journalists who investigate corruption, and has frightened opposition media
into silence. Chavez cut off the radio broadcast of one opposition TV station
which supported a military coup against his government, but even that station
continues cable broadcasts (since they don't require a TV transmitter license).
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other opposition media outlets in Venezuela.
Iraq veteran Adam Kokesh is protesting the war with clever nonviolent
stunts, and has been arrested for this.
Now the Marine Corps wants to punish him for protesting, even though he's
not in the Marine Corps any more.
Kokesh's arrest was for a protest inside a Senate office building. He was
charged with "unlawful assembly, loud and boysterous"
although he had not uttered a sound.
Congress is starting to look at Greg Palast's
evidence of felonious disenfranchisement of voters in 2004.
The CIA warned Bush of many of the bad things that might result from
attacking Iraq. Bush ignored this.
A Pakistani Christian was sentenced to death for insulting Muhammad. He
seems to deny that he did so, but whether he did or not is a side issue; to
make it a crime to express such opinions is an offense against human rights.
It is for policies like these that Pakistan is one of the countries that I
simply refuse to visit.
The US health care system, despite its high technology, kills insured
people because of bureaucracy, while other die because they can't get
insurance.
The UK's national health care system has problems too, but those problems are
mainly caused by something very simple: underfunding, which reflects the New
Labour party's priority of catering to the rich.
Islamic extremists in Gaza have threatened to kill women TV presenters
unless they cover their faces. The women are defiant.
The Eritreans presumed drowned at sea (because Malta waited 6 hours to
send a ship to rescue them) may have survived and washed back to Libya.
I support Europe's right to control immigration, but that is no excuse to let
people drown. And if these people have a valid claim they face persecution in
Eritrea, and they are already in Libya, Libya ought to give them asylum.
Libya's government is a dictatorship, but at least it has no reason to
persecute these people.
It appears that the
UK is considering removing most British troops from the Bush forces within
a year. Maybe.
Not long ago I linked to a report of a statement by a British Bush forces
division, which gave an earlier exit date, but that seems to have been an
error.
Reports about the Democratic candidates' debate confirm my support for Dennis
Kucinich. He said he would get rid of the U SAP AT RIOT act and take the US
out of the treaties (NAFTA, WTO) that subordinate democracy to corporations.
And he refused to support the invasion of Iraq when most Democratic officials
chose to go along with it.
(The dishonesty of Bush's demand for war was quite obvious, even though there
was, at the time, no proof to put him on trial with. Democrats who endorsed
his lies did so because they lacked the courage to resist the pressure.
Kucinich has that courage.)
I did not see debate, but my impression is that no other candidate supports
those positions. (Obama did oppose the invasion, but he doesn't support the
rest.) If any other candidate does support these positions, please let me
know.
Meanwhile, a bit of kudos to the candidate who pointed out that rising US gas
prices are good, because they promote conservation. Trying to push prices
down is evidence of a lack of statesmanship. What we should do is tax away
the oil companies' windfall profits, and spend the money promoting mass
transit and other good things.
B'liar's attorney general encouraged troops in the Bush forces to
disregard the human rights of Iraqi civilians.
Neocons in the Defense Department were encouraging Taiwan to declare
independence even as the State Department opposed it.
While it is ridiculous to have two parts of the government pursuing
contradictory foreign policies, I disagree with the presumption that everyone
must kowtow to Beijing's demand to swallow Taiwan (or Tibet).
The British troops in the Bush forces will be withdrawn in December.
What the heck is vote caging, and
why does nobody care?
The Department of Homeland Security was justified in the name of
preventing terrorism, but that seems just to be a front.
Bush told friends that he was trying to make it as difficult as possible
ever to remove the Bush forces from Iraq.
Real opposition in Congress would cite this publicly as a reason to stop
giving whatever Bush says the benefit of the doubt.
A report about Baghdad on a Friday night.
Andrew Bacevich, whose son was killed in Iraq,
has received insane accusations saying that he caused his son's death by
opposing the war. This is absurd, since if Bacevich's efforts had succeeded,
his son would not have been in Iraq.
Although soldiers in the Bush forces may wish to believe they are "serving
their country", whichever country it happens to be, we must not pander to this
fiction. The occupation of Iraq does not serve any country, only Bush and his
cronies. And the only support these troops deserve is pulling them out.
Republican presidential candidates are trying to propagate Bush's lie
connecting Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.
Another Guantanamo prisoner has escaped into death.
Bush's climate change plan -- do nothing but talk for two more years --
met with nothing but derision, except from toadies like B'liar.
President Chavez has proceeded with the announced plan to close the
station RCTV, which directly supported the attempted coup, by not renewing its
license.
I don't think this is dictatorship, but it wasn't necessary. If this develops
into a general policy of blocking private opposition TV, then I will be
concerned.
This article gives more information about how RCTV participated in
supporting the coup attempt.
"
US 'Exaggerating' Iran Threat For Military Intervention", says
a think tank report.
A book review of The United States Since 1980--a study of how corporations
have taken power away from democracy.
Lina Joy, a Malay living in Malaysia, has been formally denied the right
to cease to be legally regarded as a Muslim.
Most Muslim countries have similar policies; some make it a capital offense to
convert. Hardly any of them respect the human right of religious freedom.
Whenever Muslims condemn others for criticizing their religion or making fun
of it, we should throw this in their faces.
Firing union organizers is illegal, but it's standard practice in the US.
There's a report -- I don't know the source --
that 10,000 Iraqi women are in prison, and that most of them have been
raped.
Turkey is considering giving the police broad powers to collect
information and save it, to search people, and to shoot people.
McCain opposes net neutrality, and wants to put a Microsoft executive in
the cabinet.
He misses the point of democracy, which is that the non-rich can join together
against the power of the rich, and by acting jointly achieve what they
couldn't get by dealing with the same rich one by one. To advocate "no
government interference" is to advocate that the non-rich fail to use this
weapon.
Who will be the president of the World Bank is a side issue. What really
matters is to change its harmful policies.
A commentator on the BBC last night mentioned that some criticize the World
Bank as inefficient; that it has too many employees for the lending it does.
Then he mentioned that some people say World Bank loans are harmful -- and
assumed that satisfying these criticisms would require adding more employees,
as if the harm were due to mere mistakes.
This technique is commonly used in the mainstream media to sabotage
consideration of an issue: raise it in a confused way, so that the audience
believes it has considered the issue, and dismissed it for what appears to be
good reason. Few will find out that the reason was a red herring.
The ACLU has sued Jeppeson Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary, for providing
support to CIA torture flights.
Plastic has covered 40% of the ocean's surface with garbage, and the
chemicals that leach out of plastic are poisoning us and other animals.
Bill Clinton is planning to accept an award from Colombia's President
Uribe, who has been tied to murderous paramilitaries.
Scientists criticize the EPA's planned program to screen for endocrine
disruptor chemicals, saying it is as good as designed to miss most of the
problems.
Inuit, already experiencing damage due to global warming, sent a representative
to England
to testify against airport expansion.
The Bush forces are coming to recognize that they are fighting for no
good cause, as they see that the soldiers in Bush's "Iraqi army" are
fighting against the occupation.
The article ends with an absurd reason for continuing the occupation: for the
sake of the local auxiliaries that have been recruited to mainain the
occupation. We see these absurd excuses over and over, and since major US
media treat them as legitimate, they achieve a political effect.
Why did Congressional Democrats cave in on Iraq war funding? Because most
of them aren't committed to ending the war at all.
As B'liar talks about reducing UK carbon emissions,
he wants to destroy one of Britain's few ancient forests to expand an
airport.
Greg Palast:
Monica Goodling testified that Torture Gonzales' chief of staff lied to
Congress. He denied his knowledge of a feloneous Republican scheme that
disenfranchised many Black voters in 2004. And Palast has proof of it all.
The debate over internet neutrality has been nearly ignored by the US
mass media, along with other vitally important issues.
Even the network neutrality campaigners ignore one vital aspect of network
neutrality: whether network facilities and servers use free protocols that
everyone can implement. If they don't, they tend to impose the use of
specific non-free programs or systems.
Costa Rica will stop sending police for training in the US at a school for
torturers.
This school, formerly called the School of the Americas, has spent decades
teaching Latin American soldiers to overthrow democratic governments and/or
torture the opposition.
Bush isn't satisfied with surveillance in the US. He is
funding Mexico to increase surveillance, too.
I am suppose they will say this is for catching drug dealers. And they will
probably use it some of the time to catch those drug dealers who didn't pay
off the police adequately. However, they will also use it to catch political
opposition.
The drug problem in the US today is mostly due to prohibition, and further
enforcement of prohibition does not make it better. So it cannot justify
measures like this.
Haifa Zangana:
The entire Labour party shares the blame for Iraq's horrors.
The Bush regime illegally turned immigration judgeships into political
patronage.
Another Bush achievement in Iraq: growing opium.
Russia is protecting the probable murderer of Mr Litvinenko.
Amnesty International says, the UK's "politics of fear is eroding human
rights".
For the full report:
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Download-the-Report.
Political leaders of many Iraqi factions, and neighboring countries,
find it useful for fighting in Iraq to continue.
It is only the Iraqi people that suffer more and more.
B'liar's government has published a blueprint for new nuclear power
plants, while denying it is one, after a sham consultation with the public, so
they can pretend they had one.
Colorado Progressive Jews calls for an end to the occupation and a just
peace with Palestine.
The Israeli Army blocked the latest nonviolent Bil'in protest with barbed
wire, then attacked the protestors.
The Bush administration has bent over backwards to let oil companies cheat
the treasury of billions.
Amnesty International says
most Palestinians killed in Israeli raids are civilians.
Cheney directly attacked the Geneva Conventions in a speech at West Point.
What Cheney said about "the terrorists" is just as applicable to the Bush
regime when it conducts wars of brutal aggression. I hope West Point
graduates realize that.
After Bush forces troops murdered civilians in Haditha,
a cover-up was intentionally ordered at higher levels.
Note how they regard the facts of the case as "propaganda". That reflects the
attitude that the truth has no importance, an attitude that flows straight
from Bush and his supporters.
Bush wants to let nuclear arms control treaties expire.
A small boat with 53 illegal immigrants sank in the Mediterranean because
the Maltese coast guard decided not to rescue them.
Neither Malta nor the European Union has an obligation to admit unwanted
immigrants, but they do have an obligation to rescue people from sinking boats.
Bush arrogantly says "expect more bloodshed" after making the Democrats
surrender on Iraq.
Israel has arrested many Palestinian elected officials, in effect wiping
out any chance of Palestinian democracy.
The statement by Michael Williams that "legislators cannot be immune from the
law" is peculiar because, in many countries including Israel, legislators have
exactly that immunity. However, when on country's army arrests another
country's legislators, that is normally called war.
The UK has subjected several men to house arrest without trial. Several of
them have run away. The B'liar/Clown regime proposes to make this
an excuse to declare a state of emergency and abolish human rights
officially.
The Guardian published a story, attributed to someone in the Bush regime,
saying that Iran is working with al Qa'ida and the (mostly Sunni) Iraqi
resistance.
When I read that, I thought, "
This is nonsense -- but Bush would sure like us to believe it." I'm not
the only one.
Bush is quietly planning another troop increase in Iraq.
I am confident that the Iraqi Resistance will outlast the Son of Surge, but
only after Bush makes life into hell for Iraqi civilians.
Azmi Bishara, an Arab member of the Israeli Parliament, has fled into
exile after the police accused him of treason because he met with members of
Hezbollah. Bishara says that no one gets a fair trial in Israel's "security"
courts, because they use secret hearsay evidence.
Democrats in Congress have caved in to Bush, giving funding for continued
occupation of Iraq, but only for 3 months.
Television now teaches the public to legitimize torture.
There is a campaign in the UK parliament
against cooperation with Bush regime torture flights.
The expelled inhabitants of the Chagos Islands have won a court victory
over the B'liar regime, which had tried to set aside the previous court
decision which said they could go home.
The B'liar regime did this because it didn't want any civilians anywhere near
a big US base.
A company that wants to pay schools to play ads (with music) in school
buses has run into resistance.
That people can start such a company and not expect to be laughed out of every
school department's office reflects the extent of corruption of our society by
business. When cities sell names of stadiums to businesses, they set an
example of corruption that promotes corruption in every area of life.
A strict curfew in Samarra, turning the whole city into a prison, is
making it hard for residents to find food and fuel. At least 10 people have
died in the hospital as a result. Others have died because they could not get
to the hospital.
This is what Bush means by "freedom and democracy in Iraq". As usual, the
Bush forces refuse to accept responsibility for what they have done.
The Pentagon is reducing the McClatchy reporters' access as punishment for
negative coverage of the Iraq war.
I wouldn't say this is wrong in and of itself. I too decline to give some
reporters interviews (though, unlike the Bush regime, I don't try to hide it).
What is noteworthy is that this method is fairly effective at making most of
the mainstream media give positive coverage.
Palestinian rockets
finally killed an Israeli civilian.
The Israeli army and air force have been pre-emptively retaliating for this
casualty for weeks, killing many Palestinian civilians in the process. Both
the Palestinian and the Israeli attacks against civilians are wrong, but the
Israeli attacks kill many while Palestinian attacks rarely hurt anyone.
20 years after the publication of Manufacturing Consent,
the Internet has changed the landscape for corporate propaganda, but has
not eliminated the problem.
We find out about corporate-funded phony activism when it makes mistakes.
However, professionals don't make mistakes all the time. We need to be
suspicious of organizations that lobby for something corporations want -- and
we need to develop rules to make it easier to distinguish real activism (which
occasionally cooperates with companies) from fake corporate-funded activism.
A BP memo shows how it manages the agencies that are supposed to regulate
it, with a carefully planned series of personal relationships between
particular executives and regulatory officials.
A Conoco representative says his company has been "luckier" in avoiding
spills, but we know that
BP's oil spill wasn't due to mere luck.
The Pope is trying to overcome the anger caused by his praise of European
colonization and its effects on indigenous peoples in the Americas.
Bush has appointed himself total power in "emergencies", in an apparently
unconstitutional plan to "ensure constitutional government".
Everyone: sign
this petition supporting some Iraqi members of parliament in opposing the
plan to hand over the oil to foreign companies.
The US Attorney for New Mexico was fired on the excuse he was "absent
from the job" -- when, as a military reservist, he was on active duty.
The real reason is that he didn't cooperate with Republican plans to
undermine the 2008 election with fake charges of individual voter
fraud.
Uri Avnery: The Israeli inquiry into the "failure" of the invasion of
Lebanon disregards the most important issues: there was no legitimate
reason for the war, and the offered justification was a lie.
Bush is planning to continue the occupation of Iraq for decades.
More about the dishonesty at Guantanamo, how Matt Diaz tried to
protect the Constitution, and how his trial was rigged.
Lebanon is on the verge of a civil war between Islamist extremists and the
goverment.
Malalai Joya, a member of the Afghan parliament,
had bottles thrown at her there when she stood up for women's rights.
When she criticized this, the men took such offense that they suspended her
from parliament.
Many butterfly species have appeared a month early in the UK, a measure of
how much global warming is affecting the Earth.
The question now is whether we are wise enough to take action to save our
endangered space-ship, or whether greed as channelled through global
corporations will destroy it.
Brazil's Atlantic Forest has the highest biodiversity on Earth. But it is
being cut down because Brazil doesn't appropriate enough money to protect it.
Gordon Clown wants a law to make it easy to ram through any sort of
development over local opposition. He is hoping to fool opposition by making
this apply to wind-farms as well as nuclear plants and supermarkets.
Governments often use this kind of "one step forward and ten steps back"
tactic; we have to be on guard against it.
The environmental organizations in the US have become ineffective, because
they have lost the fire of activism and don't dare talk about the danger of
population growth.
This is why I do not support the cause of people who want to move to the US
for economic reasons. Letting millions of people move from overpopulated
countries to the US is not a solution to population growth. What we need is a
committment by the US and other wealthy countries to fund contraception and
abortion in the rest of the world.
The Bush forces made a plan before the war to turn the Iraqi news media
into propaganda outlets.
We don't know if this plan was followed, but don't say the Bush regime is
incapable of advance planning. It knows how to plan corruption and dishonesty.
The company SAIC mentioned in the story often does dirt for the US government.
A few years ago, SAIC held the contract to operate the computers of PDVSA, the
Venezuelan state oil company, which had fallen into the effective control of
foreigners. When President Chavez moved to reclaim Venezuelan control of
PDVSA, seeking to use the oil wealth to help the poor, the unpatriotic
managers of PDVSA tried to force it to stay shut down. SAIC helped them, by
shutting down PDVSA's computers.
The US Army is recruiting soldiers that need antidepressants to avoid
killing themselves, and recruiters tell them to lie about this.
The commanders deny that this happens. But lying is par for the course in the
Bush regime.
The US Senate is considering a law to make the CIA publish a secret
report about the 9/11 attacks in the US. Senator Wyden says, "The decision to
classify the report has nothing to do with national security, but rather
political security."
The UK has so much surveillance that even police are starting to
call it "orwellian".
Illegal sale of ivory on eBay promotes elephant poaching.
Missiles from Gaza continue to be basically harmless, but Israelis feel
they are not killing enough Palestinians in response.
The Bush forces tried in 2004 to kill Muqtada al-Sadr, with a fake offer
of negotiations meant to lure him into a trap.
Bush has established a climate of depravity in which there is no evil so bad
that his regime won't do it.
Does it make sense for thousands of people to fly or drive to a concert so
as to raise awareness of global warming?
The "Fabric of Life" road, which is the only exit from the Palestinian
village of Bir Naballah, is subject to constant Israeli harrassment. Arabs get
arrested for having dangerous weapons such as screwdrivers.
The "Iraqi" parliament protects itself from the Iraqi resistance by hiring
foreign mercenaries -- who are immune from prosecution for anything they may
do in Iraq. So they can terrorize the public with impunity.
President Musharraf is allowing Taliban-like religious extremists to
terrorize the city of Islamabad.
A navy lawyer, Matthew Diaz, told the Center for Constitutional Rights the
names of the prisoners in Guantanamo, so that it could represent them in
court. For defying the Bush regime's illegal policies, he has been sentenced
to prison.
Diaz' action was that of a hero, but he has tarnished his heroism by
apologizing for it.
The US admitted that panicking troops killed innocent civilians in
Afghanistan.
However, it does not seem to have admitted that the attempted cover-up was
wrong. (This included destroying journalists' videos.)
A probe into the possible motives of Bush and B'liar's lies about Iraq.
The World Bank pretends to help the world's poor, but its projects are
designed to help global business, while the conditions it exacts hurt the
poor. Wolfowitz' coming departure creates an opportunity for possibly
changing these policies.
China wants to legalize the sale of tiger parts, which could hurry the
tiger into extinction.
A court case accuses Bush forces troops of taking an Iraqi man hostage to
try to make his brother surrender.
Hostage-taking by the Bush forces has been documented many times.
Israeli troops killed and wounded around 100 Palestinians -- mostly
bystanders -- in "response" for Palestinian rocket attacks which apparently
did not hurt anyone.
Since the rockets were the Palestinian response to the constant oppression of
the Isreali occupation, I think Israel has no need or excuse to "respond" by
making the occupation even worse.
The Southern Ocean, whose absorption of CO2 has reduced the effects of
past emissions, has become saturated. It can do nothing to reduce the effects
of future CO2 emissions.
Standard practice for modern dictators that have a bad image in the US is
to hire a PR firm. This enables them to get the US population to like them,
or get support from the US govermment.
This practice is not limited to foreign tyrants. The US government does it,
and companies do it -- US mass media are usually putty in the hands of
well-funded PR campaigns.
How could they become trustworthy again? One approach would be to design a
code for how news media deal with PR announcements, and launch a campaign
pressuring news media to sign up. I will not try to write such a code,
because I can't do the job right: I don't know PR practices well enough to
design an effective obstacle against them. But if people who do know the
matter set their minds to it, maybe they can find a solution.
Verizon and AT&T pay hundreds of "citizens groups" to lobby for
deregulation of cable licenses in many US states -- and these groups disguise
their nature, pretending to be merely citizens with an opinion.
The BBC dares to report on the Church of Scientology.
The Church of Scientology uses copyright law to suppress information about
their secret tenets (such as, about Xenu and the Thetans). Those who try to
reveal the sacred texts are sued.
To make these practices more effective and dangerous, Scientology also directs
its pet congressmen to vote for increases in copyright power. This makes the
Church of Scientology the direct enemy of your fredeom whether or not you ever
have dealings with it.
BP's Alaskan oil spill in 2006 was caused by skimping on maintenance. In
effect, BP's talk about respecting the environment is just greenwash.
The powerful landlords of Para in Brazil, who have for years murdered
workers who got in their way, may have finally come to the end of their
impunity.
The State of Massachusetts, and environmental groups, have sued the DOE
for failing to upgrade energy efficiency standards.
In another setback for the War on the Environment, Julie MacDonald
has been forced to resign. She was used by the Bush regime to pressure
scientists to minimize the danger of extinction to various species.
The Bush forces have blocked soldiers from accessing web sites
where users share information.
Perhaps this is meant to stop them from posting photos and videos
of atrocities committed by the Bush forces against Iraqis.
CBS says it fired General Batiste for "engaging in advocacy" by
criticizing Bush's war, but it doesn't mind when other commentators
engage in advocacy in support of Bush.
Perhaps that's because CBS supports Bush. After all, CBS pays Nicolle
Wallace to make statements in support of Bush, it labels the former
Bush regime employee as a "political consultant" to disguise her
background.
Opposition parties in Pakistan called a strike which shut down the
country's main cities. They had tried to hold rallies, which were
overrun by violence; they say this violence was fomented by President
Musharraf.
The Iraqi resistance has captured a few Bush forces soldiers, which
has driven the Bush forces nuts.
Americans react irrationally when a few Americans are taken prisoner.
When some were captured by Iran, the media made it seem like a
national emergency. Some say that Reagan to make a deal with Iran, to
assure these prisoners would be held until the election, and that this
enabled him to defeat Carter, who had at least tried to send a
military force to rescue the prisoners. Later, when some Americans
were captured in Lebanon, President Reagan ransomed them with missiles
for Iran.
I hope that this coup for the resistance, while minor in objective
terms, makes stops Bush from continuing the war.
Bush's "Iraqi" government will forbid press coverages of bombings.
Whatever they may say, the reason is clearly so that Americans won't
know about the bad news.
An Israeli officer was video'd attacking civilian protestors, and now
faces possible punishment -- because it was recorded, and because the
protestors were Israeli.
This is the exception -- the normal case is that soldiers get away
with violence up to and including murder.
Deforestation is one of the main causes of global warming.
I've heard that a lot of the deforestation in Brazil is for growing
feed for cattle. The cattle produce methane, which also contributes
to global warming. Thus, eating less meat (and cutting subsidies for
its production) is an important way to reduce the problem.
Around 2 million Iraqis have fled to other countries.
This article interviews many of them, presenting a picture
of how horribly Iraq has been destroyed by Bush.
The Israeli Army has announced a plan to wipe out the Palestinian
village of Aqba, by declaring 80% of its land a "military zone".
As the G8 try to propose action to reduce climate change,
the Bush regime is trying to sabotage it.
If the other countries involved have any courage, they will make the
text sharper and dare the US to walk out.
The draining of wetlands in South Korea that are used by migrating
birds now threatens two species with extinction.
This shows what happens when environmental impact statements are not
required. It also shows why human overpopulation spells disaster for
the natural world.
In the weekly Bil'in protest, Israeli troops shot a nonviolent protestor
with rubber bullets from 10 feet away. He was seriously injured and needed
to be operated on.
The government of Afghanistan increasingly bans journalism,
and attacks or kills journalists.
A survey in late 2006 found that half the Bush forces troops say they
would not report anyone in the Bush forces for killing innocent
Iraqis
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What General Petraeus is saying about this is what Bush and everyone working for him should have said all along. But it is too late now, because the Bush forces have already given Iraqis plenty of reason to hate them. Furthermore, I don't think he has any chance of changing the soldiers' views of this unless Bush starts to back him up.
Sooner or later, humans on Earth will have zero population growth.
The question is -- how bad will things get before that happens?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bill Clinton is promoting efforts by countries such as Brazil and
India to set aside patents so as to make AIDS medicines affordable.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The WTO's patent rules are unjust, but do allow an exception when needed for public health. The US government, acting on behalf of the drug companies, pressures poor countries not to use this exception. The Clinton administration did this when in power, and the Bush regime does it now.
It is interesting that both Clinton and Gore are showing much more concern for the public good now that they are not in office. This is a sign that they felt compelled by the political system to knuckle under to the corporations -- that the megacorporations have so much power that democracy is impossible. Sad to say, Clinton's "free trade" treaties gave them this power. To reestablish democracy, we have to take away the megacorporations' power, split them up, and abolish these treaties.
Russian journalist Yelena Tregubova says that Putin has destroyed
freedom of speech in Russia. She is seeking political asylum in
London after escaping a bomb that was meant to kill her.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
In response to complaints about unofficial and quiet attempts to gag scientists, new rules have been imposed on NOAA to officially gag scientists.
Presidential candidate Giuliani seems to have tried to block the DEAs
investigation into Oxycontin addiction, acting on behalf of the company that
made it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
To restore democracy in the US would require making all politicians scared get involved in defending any company.
Halliburton drives empty trucks through the Iraqi desert, risking the drivers' lives, because it is paid per trip.
Although he denounces corruption, Greenwald insists on praising the troops in the Bush forces, who wish to imagine they are "serving their country". Thus, he considers the resulting demoralization of Bush forces soldiers a bad thing.
In a just war, it would be a bad thing. But the corruption of Halliburton is part and parcel of the greater corruption of launching a war of aggression. The ring-leaders of the combined scheme, Bush and Cheney, ought to be in prison.
Recent elections in Scotland and France may have been affected by electronic voting machine fraud. However, in Ohio, the people who stole the 2004 presidential election have been forced to resign and are being investigated.
B'liar's regime illegally delayed publishing bad news about increasing
costs for his tyrannical ID card scheme.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese freedom activist is challenging China Telecom in court for blocking access to large parts of the Internet (here is a link to the same story in Chinese).
New Bush regime regulations impose total email censorship on soldiers' families as well as on soldiers.
Bush is trying to forbid troops from speaking to members of Congress, too.
And soldiers have been told to treat reporters like spies.
The target of this secrecy is not the Iraqi resistance, which knows all it needs to know about what the Bush forces are doing. It is the public and political opposition.
A comment unintentionally highlights the absurdity of the excuse offered for this policy of cover-up. "Soldiers don't own this information -- the American people do". Strange justification for keeping it secret from us.
Michael Moore faces the threat of imprisonment for bringing some Americans
to Cuba for medical treatment. These people developed chronic illness from
air pollution while saving people during the attacks on the World Trade
Center, but they could not afford medical treatment in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
NASA predicts that by 2080, typical summer temperatures in the US
Northeast will be around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and 110 degrees won't be
unusual.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
International pressure is making China start to pressure Sudan to stop the
fighting in Darfur.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A Bush forces soldier says he watched his commander shoot five Iraqi civilians who were trying to surrender -- and then was ordered to lie about it.
This sort of thing must have happened on a smaller scale hundreds of times, but without prosecution because there was no evidence or the coverup was successful. That is what an occupying army does, and that's why those responsible for the occupation itself are the main culprits. They are the ones who established the climate that led other officers to think they should order Captain Stone not to investigate.
Congressman Kucinich is starting an investigation of conflicts of interest
in privatized government scientific measurement and testing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Kucinich for president!
The Bush regime deported illegal immigrants caught working in New
Bedford, but
Luis Posada has been spared prosecution for entering the US illegally.
He's special because he is a terrorist.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
If Castro were to handle this the American way, he would send agents to kidnap Posada and deliver him to a third country to be tortured.
NATO troops have been lilling lots of Afghan civilians, and
this is generating resentment; meanwhile, each time this happens, NATO is
reluctant to admit it, and that generates more resentment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Truck drivers in Afghanistan say they would rather be ruled by the Taliban
than by the corrupt police of the current government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Taliban are horrible, but I can understand why Afghan men would prefer them to chaotic violence.
Al Qa'ida's religious extremism is making enemies among Iraqi Sunnis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The only thing that enables Al Qa'ida to retain some power and influence among Iraqi Sunnis, despite all the trouble it causes them, is that it also fights the occupying army. Thus, the best way for the Bush regime to defeat Al Qa'ida in Iraq (supposing it really wants to) would be to withdraw the Bush forces.
The UK's program to support renewable energy in houses was so successful
that they reduced the grants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
It's a rational way to economize, if you'd rather save money than save the planet.
Frank Lund has been convicted of murder after cooperating with his
incapacitated wife's stated wish to commit suicide.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The purpose of a jury trial is so that juries can prevent such outrageous results. Jurors in trials of people accused of assisting a loved one who wishes to die, of people accused of carrying out abortions, of people accused of sharing music or software, should ignore the judge and vote "not guilty". This is called "jury nullification".
B'liar has sentenced two government employees to prison for trying to
expose some of B'liar's dirty dealings with Bush. Even worse, the information
they tried to give us has been suppressed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
If you get some important secret information about how Bush and B'liar lied to the public, you had better not trust someone in Britain or the US to pass it on to the public. I recommend sending it anonymously to Telesur.
Greg Palast: Naked neo-cons: Perjury and the Big, Bad Wolfowitz.
Israeli forces attacked Israeli and Palestinian protestors who joined
together for the non-violent removal of a stone roadblock. Then they kept
ambulances from picking up the people they had wounded. Nonetheless, the
action was a success in that the roadblock was removed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
"The Christian Taliban Is Running the Department of Defense", according to
Michael Weinstein, whose sons have been subject to anti-semitic harassment at
the US Air Force Academy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of US soldiers and vets complain that their commanders pressured
them to convert to Christianity. This pressure is applied even in the
hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Wolfowitz scandal may lead to permanent changes in appointing World Bank presidents.
Whether that would convert the World Bank into a force for good in the world is to be doubted, but at least the organization is currently demoralized and unable to do much harm.
A World Bank committee has found Paul Wolfowitz to have violated
its ethics rules.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Americans who hunt and fish are keenly aware of how climate change
is harming wildlife, and they want action right away.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A TV program that denied the reality of global warming
doctored supposed scientific data.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A power-struggle is developing in Basra, as people increasingly support larger Shi'ite nationalist parties rather than the local regime that collaborates with the Bush forces.
President Correa of Ecuador says that he will move beyond ineffective protests against Colombia's military incursions into Ecuador.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
I read recently that he ordered the airforce to intercept US drug-spraying planes if they enter Ecuadorian air space.
Ecuador is also moving to aid the Colombians who have been forced to flee by the civil war in Colombia and by paramilitaries.
Islamist fanatics attacked a school in Gaza which was having a party with boys and girls together.
The Iraqi resistance is stepping up its attacks on the Bush forces,
and the Bush forces themselves warn of increased casualties in the
future.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
When these increased casualties happen, they will say "Don't judge the results yet -- wait another month, another year."
China is forcing rural Tibetans to leave their villages and move into towns.
It is reminiscent of the "strategic hamlet" policy that the US tried in Vietnam, but the aim seems to be even worse: to destroy Tibetan culture.
How Hillary Clinton made her money -- from Wal Mart and payoffs.
Republican corruption shows its face in the Army's purchase of drainage
pumps for New Orleans.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Even if performed honestly, this task is futile -- New Orleans must be moved to high ground.
So much plastic garbage, including plastic bags, is floating in the
ocean that it is killing albatross chicks, sea turtles, dolphins, and
seals. This has inspired a campaign to end the use of plastic bags by
stores.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The campaign may help -- but we need to do something about the other plastic garbage too.
The RIAA claims to collect royalties from Internet radio on behalf of musicians, but that is a lie. The fact is, the RIAA (acting for the big record companies) demands payment even if the musicians have said their recording is freely sharable. And the musicians don't get this payment unless they join the RIAA -- and give an impression of supporting it.
This law is one more illustration of how the US government takes the side of big business over and against US citizens.
Middleman have forced down the price of cashew nuts for farmers in
Guinea-Bissau to the point where they are likely to starve
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Police in the UK arrested 32 animal rights activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Most of those arrested have not been charged with a crime, but that wasn't necessary. Since their computers, phones, and even copiers have been seized, their activities have been wiped out.
I do not agree with the animal rights movement, and in particular, I am in favor of experiments on animals for the sake of scientific advances. However, I do support human rights -- and these activists' human rights have been violated by an unjust government.
The Bush regime has censored web postings by soldiers -- and veterans --
threatening to punish anyone that makes statements the Bush regime disapproves
of.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
An Israeli commission's report condemns the government's leaders for folly
in launching war against Hezbollah last summer.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
This is less important, however, than the continued occupation of Palestine.
A UK civil servant on trial for publishing memos that give the lie to B'liar asked the jury to consider that he had acted with courage for the public good.
The Irish government is blocking a teenage girl from going to the UK for
an abortion. These religious fanatics want to force her to have a baby which
would immediately die.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Occidental Petroleum, in Amazonia, has been
callously polluting the water that native people drink.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's plan for security in Baghdad, which is to wall off many
neighborhoods and block travel, is making life more difficult but does little
to prevent death.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Half of all species on Earth are likely to be driven to extinction in this
century by human activity, unless unprecedented large wildlife reserves are
established to preserve them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Venezuela has quit the World Bank and the IMF.
Venezuela's decision has no immediate consequences for Venezuela; instead it is meant to inspire world-wide opposition to those organizations. They have a habit of imposing nasty "structural adjustment" conditions on the countries they "help", conditions such as making poor children pay for elementary school.
Around a million Turks protested against the likely next president and his
intent to turn Turkey more or less into an Islamic state.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone or write your congresscritters to save Internet Radio. You
can communicate and get more info through
this site.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
But a phone call or paper letter carries more weight than an email.
Britain's moth population is down by 30 to 50% since 40 years ago, a trend
which endangers many plants and also animals.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Wal-Mart's union busting profits from weak US labor laws, but Wal-Mart
doesn't hesitate to break these laws over and over.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Cuba has freed a number of political prisoners, but this doesn't necessarily mean a real change, as many more remain in prison.
A B'liar regime minister's aide is accused of leaking an impending arrest of terrorist suspects, trying to play it for political benefit.
Doctrines of multiculturalism have led courts in Germany to treat Muslim
women as second-class citizens, who can be beaten freely by the men in their
family because "that's their culture".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Whatever culture is in a person's background cannot excuse subjecting the person to violent abuse. And anything "Islamic" should be kept away from all contact with law, because it is sure to be an influence for cruelty to women.
New estimates suggest the Arctic Ocean will have no ice in the summer as
soon as 2050. The lack of ice means the ocean absorbs more heat, so this will
increase the danger that Greenland melts and raises sea level by 23 feet.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
A rationally based ranking of drugs by the harm they cause shows that today's prohibition policies make no sense.
In Darfur, some of the Arab groups that were fighting for the government
have switched sides, making things more complex.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush vetoed the Democrats' war-funding bill. The Democrats seem to be
determined to continue their opposition, but they may remove the deadlines and
focus on "milestones"--such as permanent theft of Iraq's oil. That would make
it all worthless.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's "Iraqi" government sent to its parliament the law to hand over Iraq's oil wealth to foreign companies.
If Congress wanted to end the war, it could pass a bill offering funding for the war on two conditions: that the "Iraqi" government not hand over its oil wealth, and that the US government award no contracts for the war without competitive bidding. If Bush signed that bill, he would lose all his motive for continuing the war. But if he refused to sign it, that would be tantamount to admitting his real motives.
Sea turtles are threatened with exinction due to human hunting of turtles
and their eggs. Efforts to protect them run into trouble with armed drug
traffickers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
In effect, the turtles are yet another casualty of America's insane "war on drugs." This war is so intoxicated, by the drugs it is on, that it doesn't realize it is killing turtles.
As patents on drugs kill millions in poor countries, the major big drug
companies try to justify the patent system by saying that it is the best way
to fund research.
This study shows how bad a system it really is, and discusses some
proposed alternatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
The elections in Nigeria were brazenly rigged.
Greg Palast says: Bush's firing of prosecutors is part of an attempt to bias the 2008 elections.
The Bush regime wants to make it almost
impossible for Guantanamo prisoners to meet with their lawyers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Mordechai Vanunu has been convicted of the crime of speaking to foreign journalists. Not that he told them any secrets (he says he doesn't know anything which is still secret) -- the mere fact that he spoke with them is his crime.
This is reminiscent of the Soviet Union and China during the cold war, when people were afraid they would be punished just for speaking with foreigners.
Former CIA director Tenet now directly accuses Bush and Cheney of twising intelligence findings to support their pre-formed intention to attack Iraq.
We already knew they had done this, but having the accusation come from a witness who clearly knew what was going on may help the pressure for impeachment.
Republicans in Congress are feeling the pressure to stop supporting Bush
on Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's invasion of Iraq, if looked at from an amoral point of view, is indeed a fiasco. Let that not distract us from the fact that it is also a monstrous crime.
Doctors say the UK's
system of free health care has become a sham, since the care provided
free is inadequate and patients regularly have to pay to supplement it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Saleh Nizar, a gardener of age 58, was arrested and tortured by the
"Iraqi" government on behalf of the Bush regime. The torture has injured him
permanently.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Nizar was fortunate to have gardened for a "senior official" who was able to get him released after 6 months. Most Iraqis wouldn't have such connections. They'd have to suffer for longer.
Uri Avnery: Comparing Israel to South Africa -- despite the similarities, they call for different solutions.
A superficial reaction to violence in US schools tends to inspire harsh
"safety measures" that tend to increase alienation of students -- and that
tends to encourage violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Sheikh Hasina, former prime minister of Bangladesh, has been
accused of murder because police killed her supporters in a protest rally.
Then she was forbidden to return to her country to stand trial and clear her
name of these charges.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
More recently,
the government reversed the latter decision and decided to allow her back
in.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
As far as I can tell, the trumped-up murder charges remain.
Two US citizens were exiled to Pakistan for 6 months by the FBI.
A distinguished British ambassador, on retiring, blasted B'liar for
screwing up British foreign policy. He sent this message private to the
government as a farewell message. The B'liar regime responded by abolishing
the practice. Now it has been leaked to the news.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar does not value truth, not even in private from people working for him. That may be rational. B'liar does not tell ambassadors his real goals; for instance, he won't say to them that "We will do whatever Bush says, and pretend to the public that we have an influence on him; what suggestions do you have?" Since their advice would be based on his public facade rather than on his real position, it is useless for him, and he knows it.
The Irish struggle against a dangerous Shell refinery plan is growing.
China has become the world's leading emitter of CO2, ahead of previous
predictions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-19 because the old link was broken.]
Any hope of avoiding environmental disaster depends on convincing China to stop building coal-powered electric plants.
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