Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
The Pentagon says that Guantanamo complies with the requirements of the Geneva Conventions.
...but does not assert this was true in the past. The commission also calls for treating the prisoners better.
That is not enough to recognize their rights: they deserve to be given fair trials or released.
A UK government report acknowledges that the surveillance society threatens people's rights, but then suggests it will be ok provided uses are "authorized at sufficiently senior level".
Even the Prime Minister is not senior enough to deserve trust, after all that the B'liar/Clown regime has done to misuse the powers given to it in the name of stopping terrorism.
A California state representative has
proposed
a bill to legalize marijuana and tax it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
I do not use marijuana, but I am very much in favor of this. Marijuana is not perfectly safe, but it is less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. Prohibiting it is simply unjust.
Even for more dangerous drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol, outright prohibition does more harm than the drug itself. I support measures to discourage the use of these drugs, but only intelligent measures will work. The War on Drugs approach tends to backfire, while corrupting police and making other police a threat to our lives.
Meanwhile, the pope is pushing for a cruel policy towards the drugs which are prohibited, even though it will kill people.
Berlusconi plans to ban strikes for many workers in Italy. Following the dishonest tendency of modern tyranny, the law pretends to offer them a useless alternative.
Amnesty International calls for an
arms
embargo against Israel and Palestinian groups, accusing both of war crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Clown regime plans to dishonestly evade a court ruling against keeping DNA samples of people not suspected of crimes.
Hampshire college has
divested
from companies that support the occupation of Palestine, as it
divested in the 80s from companies that supported the apartheid regime
in South Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama says he will remove the Bush forces completely from Iraq by 2011.
If he keeps that commitment, the question of whether some of the troops that remain for the last 17 months are combat troops mislabeled as non-combat becomes less important.
However, we have to ask what will happen to unjust laws that Bush has already imposed on Iraq, and whether the perpetrators of the crime of the invasion will be brought to justice.
Armenians plan to protest, despite a ban, against previous killing of protestors and a rigged election.
The editors of an Oxford student newspaper were forced to resign over the contents of a spoof, which was meant to make fun of them privately and was not intentionally published.
I find this act of censorship offensive.
US Citizens: phone Senator John Kerry and Representative Howard Berman to support holding oversight hearings about the war in Afghanistan.
The Capital Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In Europe: support
a green economic recovery plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Cambridge Massachusetts has
rejected
surveillance cameras.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
A UK review of primary schools says: cut out the standardized tests.
Obama
says that he will withdraw combat troops from Iraq. The Pentagon
says that this will be a lie — that some of the remaining "non-combat"
troops will be there for combat.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama's administration is defending Bush's policy of discarding emails that under law ought to be kept.
A US judge has ordered a defendant to incriminate himself by decrypting files.
The ACLU will appeal. If you are not an ACLU member, how about joining?
House bill 331 would establish a commission to investigate how
Bush
ordered Aristide overthrown in Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Binyam Mohamed's accusations have increased the pressure to get the truth about UK involvement in Bush regime torture.
The New Zealand government has
postponed
the guilt-by-accusation part of its unjust copyright law, and may cancel it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
However, the press has ignored the other unjust provision in that law, which would (like the US DMCA) censor software that helps people break digital handcuffs (see DefectiveByDesign.org). The law remains a setback for freedom in New Zealand even if the people prevail on the S92A part of it.
UK stores are pressuring Iceland not to increase whaling.
The Palestinian towns that regularly hold nonviolent protests are
harassed
several times a week by the Israeli Army. It invades the towns
at night to prevent people from sleeping and cause trouble.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Massachusetts' health care reform, that required everyone to get health insurance, has increased costs; now poor people have to do without needed care.
When Bush started a war based on lies, he committed fraud.
Here's
a book explaining how to prosecute Bush for this fraud.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
When Atlanta police invaded Kathryn Johnston's home without warning, she defended herself and they killed her. Then they lied about what had happened, and tried to plant drugs.
That much is so commonplace that it almost isn't news. What's news is that these police
are
going to jail for it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Conservatives in the media and army are trying to force Obama to continue unethical and damaging Bush policies.
The US has forbidden the sale and even donation of children's books printed before 1985, so they are being discarded en masse by used book stores. It is not clear whether libraries are forbidden to lend them.
Jack Straw, who surely played a major role in B'liar's decision to join the invasion of Iraq, has used his current powers to conceal how that decision was made.
This is known as "obstruction of justice" when anyone else does it.
The Iraqi
national museum has reopened, as a shadow of its former self,
with many pieces still missing and others replaced by photos.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Countrywide Financial has changed its name, like Blackwater, to evade the odium of its recent acts.
The Clown regime is proposing "welfare reform" designed to force poor women to accept whatever child care and jobs they are assigned, even if it is bad for their children.
The effect may be reduced if there are no jobs available, but that may not be true forever.
The US mainstream media's right wing bias is bad enough, but things can get worse. As the somewhat-biased traditional newspapers fail, the US will be left with only the extreme right-wing media.
US progressives need to invest in building media as the right wing has done.
A Bush forces soldier has been convicted of murdering an Iraqi.
It is rare to have the basis to prosecute a soldier for wanton killings. Hundreds, or perhaps thousands of the soldiers in the Bush forces have done it, and most were never prosecuted. If soldiers randomly shoot the people in a car, they only have to say "We thought they were attacking us," and they will get away with it.
This is why starting a war of conquest and aggression is such a serious crime, and why Bush and other leaders must be prosecuted for it.
Kyrgyzstan has told the US to close an air base which is used for bringing troops and arms to Afghanistan. This reduces the US to imploring the tyrannical regime of Uzbekistan for help.
Nina Paley is going to release her animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, with freedom to share. She is looking for contributions to pay the ransom from the music.
I am going to donate cash to her next time I am in NYC.
Binyam Mohamed, released from Guantanamo, arrived in the UK. Police immediately questioned him for hours under "anti-terror" legislation.
After orchestrating his torture for years, don't they know all there is to know about him?
UK police warn that lots of people unemployed might join in protests against the privileged few who are not sharing their hardship, or trashing the environment.
The report takes for granted that the state should try to suppress these grievances rather than act on them.
Haiti's US installed government has finally banned Aristide's party from running for the Senate, on the pretext that Aristide did not explicitly allow the list.
Aristide refuses to legitimize the coup by signing documents for the coup-installed government.
Chicago wants to
put
a surveillance camera on every street corner.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The article ludicrously assures Americans that we have nothing to fear because the system only sees only where we go outside of buildings. If only we could trust police to pursue only criminals and not dissidents also. How the police of previous Mayor Daley would have loved this system during their police riot at the Democratic Convention in 1968.
It is normal police practice to arrest the leaders of protests pre-emptively, fabricating charges as it suits them, just to sabotage political opposition. It's Watergate, only with burglary replaced by false arrest. The only thing protecting democracy from the police is what they do not know. If we allow the police to watch everything we do, there will be no room left for democracy.
Conservatives want the government to fail to serve and protect the public — so they can claim it is impossible.
An
interview with Sahar Vardi, who has been imprisoned repeatedly
for refusing to participate in the occupation of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama has sensibly
rejected
a scheme to replace the gas tax with a miles-traveled tax independent of gasoline usage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Even aside from the privacy issue, it is absurd to transfer the tax burden from inefficient cars to efficient cars.
States such as Massachusetts and Oregon are considering such schemes too. The public should write and phone their state legislators now to oppose them.
Israel is the main threat to the human rights of Palestinians, but Hamas threatens them too.
It was Israel's refusal to make peace with Fatah that gave Hamas its strength. The best way to weaken Hamas among Palestinians is for Israel to make peace.
Binyam Mohamed, after torture, admitted reading an article about how to build an H-bomb. The article was a satire, but this was used as an excuse for imprisoning him further.
Even if the article had real instructions for making a bomb, that by itself would not justify imprisoning anyone. Only tyrannical governments, such as the Clown regime, imprison people for what they have read.
The Clown regime decided on secret evidence to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan, where he is likely to be imprisoned and tortured.
He is said to face trial in Jordan — a military trial, which probably means it is fundamentally unjust. He deserves an extradition hearing which would consider whether he will get a fair trial.
Uri Avnery: What does the Netanyahu/Lieberman coalition imply for Israel's future? If Obama objects to their policies, this might teach Israel a lesson; but he will find it easier not to fight back.
Israel plans a big
expansion of West Bank settlements.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Chinese government has closed Tibet and sent in troops.
In the UK: stand up for liberty in Britain, by participating in the Convention on Modern Liberty in London on February 28.
Those accused of arranging the assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya were acquitted, and perhaps were innocent, since the investigation made little serious effort to find the killers.
The UN accused Syria of secretly building a nuclear reactor.
The Bush regime's conduct gave every target of US hostility good reason to believe that only possession of nuclear weapons can protect it from US invasion. Meanwhile, the Western disregard for Israel's nuclear weapons leads countries such as Syria to regard the nonproliferation treaty as simply unfair.
Using Alberta's tar sands for oil could make short-term sense, if we don't care about destroying our habitat.
Keep track of whether Obama keeps his promises.
So far he seems to be honest for the most part. What worries me is not whether he will keep his promises, but what he didn't promise: to restore human rights and end pervasive surveillance.
New Zealanders have attacked unjust copyright laws with
the
Copywrong Song.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
After an Italian judge ruled that a woman who has been in a vegetative coma for 17 years could be disconnected from her feeding tube, Berlusconi is accusing the judge, the president, and her father of "killing" her.
As is typical of dogmatic champions of the "right to life", Berlusconi
only applies this principle when it is a stretch to say that there
is a human being. He is quite willing to disregard it in cases where
there is no doubt of that, such as for
people
in Gaza and
illegal
immigrants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Zaidi, the shoe-thrower of Baghdad, is on trial and facing the threat of 15 years in prison. Iraqis still lionize him.
I wonder if Maliki has the power to pardon Zaidi. If he does, Iraqis should demand he do so. Americans, too. The shoes he threw, he threw for all of us.
The US has treaty obligations to prosecute Bush regime torturers,
and Americans support doing so, but it looks like
Obama
won't do it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Although the rate of killing in Iraq is less than a year ago, Baghdad still sees bombings every day.
Will Obama protect social security and medicare?
Pakistan caved in to extremists by
imposing
sharia law on a part of the country. This is an injustice for
everyone affected, but especially women.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Although Zardari says he hopes this will prevent extremists from taking over Pakistan, I think it brings them a step closer to doing so.
The US army is expanding the prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
There is nothing wrong with taking enemy fighters prisoner if they are treated properly as prisoners of war. What worries me is the claim that they are "unlawful" because that was the Bush excuse for disregarding treaties and laws about treatment of prisoners.
Afghanistan, the
next
US Quagmire?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
I must acknowledge that I supported the intervention in Afghanistan, not because of 9/11, but rather to eliminate the tyranny of the Taliban. Whether this intervention might have succeeded if Bush had not diverted attention to Iraq, I cannot tell.
Israel is facing legal proceedings for various banned weapons in civilian areas, and for
torturing
Palestinian prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
New York police who arrested Robert Taylor for photographing a subway train had to drop that charge, since there's no law against it. But they did not drop the other bogus charges.
The other bogus charges show the real danger of the police: they do not hesitate to lie, even in court, to punish whomever they wish to hurt.
If it really is a crime to shout at a policeman who is falsely arresting you, the injustice is in the law. Otherwise, it is in the policeman. Either way, it is part of a system that gives the police power to tyrannize with impunity.
The attempt to justify bullying in the name of 9/11 is typical for the US. Authorities attacking our freedom like to claim that "9/1 changed everything", but it did not change right and wrong. All it changed was the set of excuses available to the enemies of freedom.
New Zealand's unjust copyright law has become a big political issue.
Berlusconi's co-conspirator was convicted of corruption charges. Berlusconi passed a special law so he could escape the charges.
A large aid convoy is going to drive from London to Gaza via Egypt. Will Egypt and Israel let it enter Gaza?
After the CIA kidnapped Binyam Mohamed from Pakistan and handed him over to Morocco for torture, MI5 could no longer find him, so it passed questions to the CIA to give him.
Blackwater is not the only mercenary company with a bloody record in Iraq.
James Hansen: coal power plants are death factories.
The Iranian mullahs have made a slightly veiled death threat against Khatami if he runs for president there.
In the last elections, the mullahs banned most of the pro-reform candidates, making the election a sham.
The silent toleration of Israel's nuclear weapons has undermined the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
Pakistan's government
accepted
Indian claims that the Mumbai terror attack
was plotted in Pakistan, and has begun prosecuting suspects.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama has encouraged investigation into the frauds that ate up 50 billion dollars in US funds for Iraqi reconstruction that never happened.
I proposed, at the time, that Bush and Cheney wanted to funnel money to their cronies (for instance, Halliburton), and this required creating a climate in which fraud was encouraged.
Republicans are grasping at straws to prevent the closure of the Guantanamo prison.
Jordan and the Palestinian Authority have asked the International Criminal Court to charge certain Israeli officials with masterminding crimes in Gaza.
The Israeli responses are weak: "you killed Palestinians too" (is that an excuse?) and attempts to evade jurisdiction imply recognition of the wrong.
Various human rights organizations will press the EU to support an investigation of these crimes.
In New Zealand: black out your avatars as a protest against the guilt-by-accusation internet law.
New Zealand citizens: sign the petition against the guilt-by-accusation Internet law.
Blackwater has changed its name, hoping to duck the hostility it has earned.
A law could block these subterfuges. Imagine a law requiring all publicity and statements by a company that changed its name within the last 5 years to mention the previous names.
Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, accuses governments (including the US) of exploiting people's fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties.
We have long known that this is what they were doing. But it helps that this is acknowledged by someone who was in charge of an intelligence agency.
Arguing that the US should nationalize the insolvent banks, which will then enable the government to stop the foreclosures of homes.
Hamas censors
the reporting of journalists that live in Gaza. Israel has done
its best to exclude all other journalists from Gaza, and attacked
media organizations along with other civilian targets during the recent
bombardment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Terror suspects were tortured in Pakistan under UK policy.
A British missile submarine collided with a French one in the middle of the Atlantic. They were both running silently to avoid detection and had no idea another sub was nearby.
To some extent people are exaggerating the issue, since such a collision cannot launch the subs' missiles. If the collision had been harder, it might have sunk one or both of the submarines and killed the crew. That would have been a sea disaster, but not a global calamity.
Perhaps magnetic detectors would enable a sub to notice the existence of a large approaching piece of metal without advertising its own presence for a long distance.
The Italian government plans to require ISPs to censor web pages that express admiration of mafia figures. Perhaps any and all criminals.
I disagree with the people who admire mafia leaders, but they have a right to express their views. Censoring such views is extremely dangerous.
History
taboo in Iraq schools.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Almost 200,000 Indian farmers are known to have
committed
suicide due to the debts that resulted from imposed economic globalization.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Imagine how much better it would have been if they had mobilized politically instead.
Human rights campaigners accuse Hamas of attacking and killing all critics and opposition (not just collaborators).
Israel has allowed a small, temporary exception in the siege of Gaza.
After the UK government decided not to prosecute the killers of de Menezes, despite their contradictory testimony, the family has decided to sue the police.
Uri Avnery: The Israeli left has neutralized itself by supporting wars. A new party is needed to reinvigorate the left and make peace possible.
Nokia ordered the government of Finland to pass a law, and
Finland
is obeying.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
I do not trust the denials. However, the most important point here is not that this has happened, but that everyone regards it as possible.
If a company is so big that the state dare not disobey it, the company's existence is incompatible with democracy. To maintain the people's sovereignty, the people must break up these companies, chase them out, or nationalize them.
British photographers will protest the new law that would
imprison
those who take photos of policemen.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The condition "likely to be useful..." is one that can almost never be disproved, so the police will be able to use this law against any photographer they want to stop.
What worries me most is not that they will apply it to the mainstream press, but that they will apply it to people taking photos and videos of protests. These recordings are the only defense protestors have against the tendency of police to attack them and then falsely accuse them.
The Haitian candidates rejected by the government have been given a
chance to appeal.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Lieberman, now possibly in a position to enforce his demands in Israel, wants to take citizenship away from Israeli Arabs unless they take a loyalty oath to Israel as a "Jewish state".
According to Jewish Voice for Peace, Liberman's party says that
collecting
money for Gaza relief is "disloyal". They cited a statement in
Hebrew by the party, which I cannot verify.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Wise people have said for years that occupying Palestine is toxic for Israeli society; now the effects have reached the structure of Israeli democracy. I hope that the Arab citizens of Israel will launch a massive campaign of protest and civil disobedience to block this.
The proposal to transfer some Israeli territory (where mainly Arabs live) to Palestine might be a good thing for everyone, if it is done as part of a peace agreement that establishes a sovereign Palestinian state. However, without such an agreement, it could instead be the excuse to turn parts of Israel into occupied territory.
Tunnels from Egypt
provide
the only source of goods for people in Gaza, aside from the UN
aid that Israel limits and sometimes blocks.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this petition urging to talk with all sides in order to bring
about peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Americans need to understand how the "financial experts" screwed them, so they can demand the deeper reforms that will stop it from happening again.
Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders was barred from entering the UK where he had been invited to make a presentation to the House of Lords.
If Wilders calls for the Qur'an to be banned, he commits the same kind of wrong that the UK committed against him. That is grounds to condemn his views, but not grounds to ban them.
The US has also banned visiting speakers because of what they proposed to say to Americans. Famous speakers barred in this way have included Farley Mowat and Bertrand Russell. I have no reason to believe this practice has changed, but there may be less occasion to apply it nowadays, as such speakers may now far they would be imprisoned without trial.
I am disappointed in the LibDems for endorsing this ban.
Plainclothes police in the US went on a mission to grab a 12-year-old girl. They beat her up, let her go, then came back later and arrested her for resisting arrest.
It is almost irrelevant that it was the wrong girl. It would have been just as wrong to do this to the intended victim.
Why aren't Americans rioting like the rest of the world?
Obama's economic measures are too conservative to address the structural problems of the market.
In Wake of Crisis, New Economic Thinking Emerges.
US citizens: sign this petition to hold accountable the perpetrators and planners of the Bush regime's crimes.
Some comments on the House of Lords report condemning the British surveillance state.
I do not mind CCTV if it will only be examined when there is a crime and the police get a warrant. I may even appreciate it. However, when police demand to be able to access the recordings even when there was no crime, as they apparently want to do in the pub in Islington, that is dangerous. We know they will use this against protestors and dissidents.
Gavin Smith's letter rightly suggests paying attention to issues of potential future surveillance. However, by declaring the report a "historical document", it implies people should give up on opposition to all existing surveillance systems. That would be a grave mistake.
Obama has endorsed the Bush ploy which has stopped courts from giving justice to the victims of US government torture and kidnapping.
The ACLU gives
the details on these cases, and what Obama's policy implies in terms of injustice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
In effect, he says: "You're not supposed to torture — but if you do, I'll make sure you are not punished."
Everyone: Boycott Kellogg's (or at least call and object) for demonizing the use of marijuana.
UK Citizens: help write a response to the Clown regime's plans to
restrict
the internet for megacorporations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama's generals are covering up how they tortured Binyam Mohamed.
Supposedly this is to save him embarassment, but really it is a scheme to conceal these crimes and protect them.
Tsvangirai has become the prime minister of Zimbabwe in a power sharing deal, but Mugabe is already cheating on the deal.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support single-payer health care.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Here
is COSATU's statement about blocking the unloading of Israeli
goods in South Africa. COSATU sees the occupation of Palestine as
similar to apartheid.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
Meanwhile, Israelis opposed to the occupation
document
the companies that profit from it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
The net is closing on UK ministers who presided over UK participation in foreign torture. They are trying to cover it up and pretend nothing wrong was done, but the contradictions are showing through.
Here's a denunciation of Myspace.
The first comment makes a valid point, but it doesn't imply that everyone ought to post extensively on Myspace. Someone maintains a Myspace account about me, with my approval, and I don't think I should take it down — but that isn't the same as using Myspace extensively.
Israeli troops shot a Palestinian farmer for
walking
on his land.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
Kadima got more votes than expected in the Israeli election. Perhaps killing hundreds of civilians really works. But the end reseult is that the fascist Lieberman, whose party was third, is in control.
With Israel and Palestine hostage to their extremists,
will
the US cut their chains?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
Meanwhile, there are rumers that
a
longer truce between Israel and Hamas is being worked out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
Tremendous fires have killed hundreds in Australia.
As regards to the people who set some of the fires, they did indeed commit multiple murder, but calling them "terrorists" is a dangerous exaggeration. "Arsonist" and "murderer" are bad enough names for them.
Meanwhile, we shouldn't forget that only a small fraction of the fires were intentionally set. If we could stamp out arson completely, that would not make the danger go away.
Part of the cause is that modern people don't let the forest burn.
This has totally transformed the Australian forests. I read that when Sydney was settled, today's forests did not exist; trees were sparse due to the fires the aborginials frequently set. The low brush makes lower, cooler fires that pass under mature trees without burning them, but they do burn saplings. This is what still happens in the Kakadu forest: I saw one of those fires, and it was not dangerous.
The other cause of these fires is record temperatures and a long drought, both partly due to global warming. Global warming is also causing droughts in other places, and fires like this will become more frequent.
Iran's president Ahmadinejad is in favor of Obama's overtures toward better relations.
Here's what it is like to work in a sweatshop in China.
One of the comments points out that sweatshops in the US were similarly nasty, 150 years ago. That changed because the US passed laws to make working conditions better and less nasty, and to allow independent labor unions.
Then treaties such as the World Trade Organization allowed companies to make working conditions worse again, by moving the jobs to China and similar countries where there are no such laws (or they are not enforced). These treaties were designed for that effect, which is what makes them evil.
I do not condemn these treaties because they enabled Chinese to get jobs formerly heald by Americans. That as such is not wrong. I condemn these treaties because they enabled the megacorporations to cut pay and mistreat their workers.
The Iraqi government, in an act of political censorship,
ordered
the removal of the statue honoring shoe-thrower al-Zaidi.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Police in South Africa attacked a bus full of students headed for a demonstration in support of Palestinians, threatening to shoot them.
Meanwhile, dock workers in South AFrica are protesting by refusing to unload goods from Israel.
Warming of the ocean near Antarctica
threatens
extinction for many species that live nowhere else.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US military spends almost 5 billion dollars a year on spreading a one-sided picture of what it does.
The UK government is concealing evidence that the US tortured Binyam Mohamed, catering to demands from the US government. The foreign minister openly states his intention to continue this subservice.
The Bush regime wanted that evidence concealed so it could give Mohamed an unfair trial and railroad him to execution.
Here is information about his torture.
Clown and Miliband continue repeating the claim that they do not "condone torture". More precisely what they are doing is called "Abetting torture". By concealing evidence of torture on behalf of the perpetrator, they become accessories after the fact.
It will be interesting to see whether Obama withdraws the US threat to which Clown has rolled over. That is his duty. But that would not be enough to save the UK. It must replace those toadies with men of principle that have the courage to break off a "special relationship" rather than condone and abet war crimes.
Internet users in Ireland: boycott EIRCOM.
Obama still intends
to withdraw most of the Bush forces from Iraq — but not all.
This article does not say whether Obama plans to leave troops that
are really advisors, or leave combat troops while labeling them as
"advisor". The Pentagon began
relabeling
combat troops as "advisors" in 2008, and I don't know whether Obama will undo that.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
What
we have learned about global warming in 2008.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Tel the Boy Scouts:
stop
selling land to loggers!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the bill to
investigate
the Bush regime's involvement in the coup in Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641, and 888-355-3588.
Javed Iqbal was sentenced to prison, in the US,
for
helping clients of his satellite TV company receive Hizbollah's TV station.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Thus the unjust practice of declaring organizations "terrorist" without a trial leads to the further injustice of censorship.
The US "no-fly" list has cost $500 million, along with frustration for thousands of innocent people, but it would be easy for any organized terrorists to bypass.
We can only conclude that the lack of airline terrorism is because no organized terrorists are trying to do it, or because other measures are enough to stop them.
It follows that the harassment of the no-fly list is not justified. It should be eliminated, and Americans should once again have the right to travel anonymously.
The Associated Press is trying (yet again) to twist copyright law and increase its power.
US citizens: phone your congress critter to cut funds for the ludicrous anti-marijuana movies put out by the "Drug Czar"'s office.
Also communicate your message through the MPP's web site.
Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641, and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: sign
this petition for House Resolution 104 to investigate crimes of
the Bush regime, and phone your congresscritter to support it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641, and 888-355-3588.
House of Lords: rise of CCTV is threat to freedom in the UK.
The pseudo-democratic Haitian government established by the US-run coup has
forbidden
Aristide's former supporters to run for office.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
An anti-vaccination radio show is trying to use copyright to suppress condemnation by the public and by medicine. Lives are at stake.
What Bush did to Iraq: around a million killed, 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans.
The US military suicide rate has reached a record high. Military veterans age 20-24 are four times as likely to commit suicide as non-veterans.
When soldiers feel they have betrayed their values — for instance, when they have brutalized civilians or been buddies with soldiers that did so — or when they think their commanders lied to them or betrayed them, that makes it harder for them to live with themselves aftward. So we should expect high suicide rates for those who participated in the conquest and occupation of Iraq.
It also contributes to PTSD, as the book Achilles in Vietnam shows.
A Dutch study concludes that P2P file sharing makes a positive contribution to society.
Of course, we know this is true, but it is good to see it confirmed carefully.
Heroic intelligence officer Frank Grevil went to prison for telling the public that Bush was lying about Saddam Hussein.
The mass media spread sensationalist fear about the effects of crack cocaine on babies, while minimizing the danger of lead poisoning because that was uncomfortable for aboveground businesses. Turns out that lead is a big danger to babies and crack is a small one.
The Israeli navy boarded an aid ship heading for Gaza, physically attacked the crew, and destroyed the reporters' broadcasting equpiment so there would be no proof.
When the navy denies beating the crew, I am sure it is a lie.
The article mentions that Israel will not allow steel into Gaza. Without steel it is impossible to rebuild the buildings that Israel destroyed. Once again, Israel intends to inflict lasting suffering on tens of thousands of noncombattants.
The article mentions the aid boat which was forced to go to Lebanon. That boat was rammed several times and nearly sunk.
The UK government is trying to conceal how man civilians it has killed in Afghanistan. An officer faces criminal charges for giving that information to a human rights campaign.
The people of Afghanistan are fully aware of how many of them are being killed. The secrecy is aimed at the people of the UK, and the US.
People in the UK should hold demonstrations to cheer him.
A UK parliamentary committee will question a minister about allegations that MI5 agents encouraged Pakistani jailers to use torture.
The Israeli governing parties attacked Gaza and killed hudreds of civilians to win votes. It looks like they failed in their aim.
A clever hacker (though the reason he is a hacker is not
what they think) demonstrated the
danger
of using RFIDs in US passport cards.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
In Nineva province,
many
Sunnis were blocked from voting, and many votes were bought.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama's policy in Afghanistan is following the path of LBJ in Vietnam.
Heathrow security defused a deadly rice-milk threat by insisting that it be decanted into baby-bottles.
The Governments negotiating ACTA seem to be planning to make file sharing sites a crime. And they refuse to tell citizens what they are doing.
This is the standard procedure by which governments use trade treaties to attack their citizens. First they draw up a treaty by which they all promise to do so. Then they say, "We have to agree to every provision of we won't get the business benefit of the treaty." Then people surrender their freedom.
The whole scheme is evil from the first step to the last. It is a sign of a government that is a toady for business, and the enemy of its own citizens.
The B'liar/Clown regime has made nearly all protest a crime through a law against "harassment".
Obama has imposed a pay cap on executives of banks that accept bailouts in the future.
Congress is proposing to make it apply to all companies receiving bailout funds.
Obama's plan for a US infrastructure reconstruction bank risks squandering money just like the "reconstruction" of Iraq, if it doesn't do more to impose accountability than currently proposed.
The Chinese government is
covering
up both the recession and the
protests of the unemployed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
It is refreshing that the article at least mentions the need to increase Chinese worker's wages.
Burning ethanol made from corn is much more damaging to human health than burning petroleum.
(It also makes more CO2 and causes lots of other environmental damage.)
Loggers are
invading and taking over Indian lands in the Amazon in order to cut down the trees.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
When Russian dissidents are not killed, they can be committed to mental hospitals and drugged.
Low
turnout in Iraq's election reflects a disillusioned nation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Debunking the Reagan myth: his so-called achievements.
Uri Avnery: it's good that Spain plans to prosecute Israeli war criminals, but for Israel's honor, it should prosecute them first.
US citizens: phone or write your congresscritter to oppose the "Fair
Copyright in Research Works" act, proposed by the journal publishers
to sabotage open access to scientific works. See
http://taxpayeraccess.org/fcrwa.html.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
For more information.
Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641, and 888-355-3588.
Israel is seriously concerned that its leaders and officers will be prosecuted for war crimes in Gaza, up to the point of trying to conceal which officers were involved in the attacks on Gaza.
A project aims to build a million new ponds in Britain, restoring the damage done in the past couple of centuries.
Dozens of people in Gaza have been killed as collaborators or in acts of revenge.
I can't blame them for killing traitors. If Gaza were at peace, with a government in full control, it would owe alleged traitors fair trials before punishing them. But we cannot hold a besieged enclave to such standards.
Obama says that George Mitchell will start his Middle East mission by "listening to all the major parties" — except Hamas and Hezbollah. Perhaps he should at least listen to some Palestinians and Lebanese.
Dumping
agricultural plant waste in the ocean could cut human CO2 emissions by 15%.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
This might make it possible to solve the problem, but only in combination with other measures.
Israel intends to continue the collective punishment of Gaza until all its demands are met, including the release of a captured soldier.
This means it is official Israeli policy to commit a war crime even if Hamas never does so again.
Turkish president Erdogan at Davos vociferously condemned Israel's attacks against Gaza, and walked out.
Recognizing the genocide of the Armenians is the right thing to do, but using it to pressure for acceptance of modern war crimes is absurd.
The Iraqi provincial elections have been marred by death threats and assassinations. However, they seem to be engaging people's political interest nonetheless.
More about
vote buying.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Since Bush's proclaimed desire for democracy in Iraq was a shame all along, it would be quite ironic if his war leads to democracy there. However, it won't be real democracy until it can abolish the laws, imposed by Bush, that give foreign companies control over Iraq's economy.
The Iraqi government, showing a little independence, has ordered Blackwater out of the country.
However, if it wants to show real independence, it should free the shoe-thrower of Baghdad, and drop teh case against him.
I wonder if people could organize a campaign to elect him to public office.
Afghanistan's presidential election has been postponed due to fighting with the Taliban.
I wonder whether Taliban-aligned candidates will be allowed to run.
The publishers of scientific journals, parasites who obstruct the dissemination of scholarly works, are lobbying for laws to cement their power.
ITER, the international project to develop a fusion reactor, now has a target of 2018 and could cost over 20 billion dollars.
That a research project costs a lot of money, or runs into snags, is normal and does not mean the result will not be useful. However, if raw materials costs are responsible for a cost increase of billions of dollars, can we really expect fusion to be economically feasible?
Although fusion reactions do not produce dangerous waste, the reactor tends to become highly radioactive under the high flux of neutrons. This equipment waste can be as dangerous as the waste from a fusion reaction. (If you know whether the ITER design avoids this, please tell me.)
It seems to me that renewable energy generation has a better chance of saving civilization.
70% of the population of France is in favor of the general strike against Sarkozy's pro-business economic policies.
It is too bad that the next election is far away.
A Spanish court is investigating former Israeli officials for a war crime, a targeted assassination with a large bomb that predictably killed and injured many of the target's neighbors.
The Israeli response clearly shows the attitude which gives rise to war crimes: the claim that, against "terrorists", anything is permissible and no scruples need apply.
Due to lack of funds, food aid for Zimbabweans will be cut to below the amount needed for survival. People are expected to begin starving to death. Mugabe will make sure those who opposed him starve first.
The only real solution to the problem of Zimbabwe is to remove Mugabe from power. A military intervention to do this should be easy, since his supporters are motivated by privilege and exploitation (and now, food) rather than by any higher loyalty.
The two crucial ethical criteria are whether Zimbabweans in general want such an intervention, and whether we could count on the intervening forces to solve the problem. I see no doubt about the latter, since even a typical, corrupt African government would be a big improvement over the current situation. I do not know what Zimbabweans think about the idea, but I would expect they dismiss the question, knowing there is no chance it will happen: the great powers are not willing to intervene. Perhaps the starvation of millions will change their mind.
Republicans are trying to sabotage the stimulus plan so that Democrats won't get credit for saving the economy.
Rep. Conyers has subpoena'd Karl Rove once again to testify about the firing of federal prosecutors who refused to launch politically-motivated false persecutions.
Predation by humans is making many species evolve rapidly towards smaller size and earlier maturity.
Banks are
using their bailout funds to lobby against unionization and to
threaten the politicians that support it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The main Irish ISP, EIRCOM,
has imposied on its customers a policy of termination after three complaints from publishers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
And the Clown regime is talking about legislating a similar policy.
Merely by using the term "piracy" to describe the sharing, these governments pledge allegiance to the publishers, against their own citizens.
Australian booze companies are offering money to try to reduce binge drinking, but their aim is to steer efforts away from the effective approaches that might reduce their profits.
David Attenborough is receiving hate mail from Christians for refusing to giver any credence to creationism in his scientific programs.
Shrinking Glaciers Have Put Tibetans in the Path of Climate Chaos.
Many of the Haitians who overthrew Aristide's government
(in a coup organized by the Bush regime) now are
accused of
drug trafficking by the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
I suspect that other parts of the US government, those which worked with these people in the coup, are protecting them now.
Two courts in the UK have now agreed that the minute of B'liar's cabinet meeting, which discussed invading Iraq, must be published so people can judge whether the invasion was illegal.
The ministers still have ways they can try to cover it up, but vetoing it outright will cost them in the coming elections. Since Labour will probably lose, the next government may publish them.
That means we have a chance of seeing B'liar behind bars. But that will not automatically restore the Rights of Englishmen which he has mostly abolished.
A furnace in a military base
provides
evidence of the murder of
hundreds of prisoners by the Peruvian army.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Khaled El Masri has
sued
the government of Macedonia for handing him
over to the CIA for torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US Supreme Court and the German government have obstructed Masri's attempts to get justice against his kidnapers. Will Obama prosecute them?
Following the U SAP AT RIOT act, over 200 people have been placed on
the government's "no fly" list for acts such as arguing or kissing in
planes. Some have been
convicted
of "terrorism" for this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Any juror who votes to convict a person of "terrorism" because she argued in a plane and the US government has defined this as "terrorism" has, in effect, agreed to take a lie as truth because the lie was incorporated into a law. The purpose of the jury is to protect people from unjust prosecution, and that includes any prosecution based on a lie.
Obama has taken positive steps to raise the new car milage standards.
Due to the recession these will not have as much effect as they would have had a few years ago.
UK police seized
an Indymedia server, without a warrant, looking for
information which Indymedia does not collect and which would have been
on a different machine if it existed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
James Lovelock suggests we could stop global warming by converting agricultural plant waste into charcoal and burying it, on a massive scale. Otherwise, he predicts, billions of people will starve as global warming destroys agriculture.
The "Justice" Department is
trying
to protect Bush's illegal spying
from a lawsuit by concealing the evidence that the plaintiffs were
specifically spied on.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama has never stated the intention to restore meaningful treatment to the fourth amendment.
Contrary to widespread worries, Bush did not pardon war criminals.
This means they can be prosecuted in US courts. Will Obama have the guts and the conscience to do so?
Are We Civilized Enough to Hold Our Leaders Accountable for War Crimes?
Contribute
to a campaign to change the one-sided US media
approach to the occupation of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
NSA warrantless wiretapping targeted non-terrorists,
including
journalists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Even before computers, thoroughgoing systems of registering information about citizens could easily serve genocidal purposes. The Netherlands adopted such a system in the 1930s, and it was used with deadly effect by the Nazi conquerors.
See
page 13 and following pages.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
A family hastening to the US to visit their dying father/grandfather was locked up by US immigration agents without food and water — including the children — and then deported. He will most surely die without seeing them.
Note the callousness of the response of the US consulate "spokesman", which in effect said only "this wasn't illegal" and disregarded the question of whether it was nasty and shameful. This spokesman reflects the same spirit of cruelty that actuated the policemen who arrested them.
But even if refusing people entry to the US is not illegal, denying them food and water may be illegal.
Calvin & Hobbs explain the US auto industry's problems.
US citizens: call on Obama to keep his pledge to end federal drug raids on state-legalized medical marijuana operations.
Obama has ended the Reagan/Bush policy of refusing aid to organizations that go so far as to tell women about the possibility of an abortion.
Population growth exacerbates all the main problems that humanity faces, so the world needs to make abortions and contraception available as conveniently as possible.
Sign this
petition to Obama about peace in the Middle East,
which urges him to support the Saudi peace plan, and to treat
Israeli and Palestinian rearmament in the same light.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Defense Secretary Gates says he expects to keep the
Bush forces in
Iraq for
many years.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Americans who hoped Obama would withdraw them are going to be disappointed — but since the US media don't cover Iraq any more, maybe most of them won't notice.
Congolese rebel leader Nkunda has been captured.
Here's what his troops do to civilians.
Gaza: 'I
watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls'
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The NSA's illegal wiretapping covered all communications in the US, and journalists were a prime target.
The Clown regime is
trying
to sneak through a law to allow the
government to collect, and centrally store, any information
about anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
UK citizens: phone your MP, and/or send mail using
http://www.WriteToThem.com,
and ask him to read Part 8 (clauses 151 -
154) of the Coroners and Justice Bill, and to oppose the
massive
surveillance powers in the "Information sharing" clause.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama's statement on Gaza was a shade less one-sided than Bush used to be.
At least according to this article, he said nothing about the siege of Gaza or the need to end it. I don't think this change is enough to shift to a better path.
In regard to the broarder goal of piece between Israel and Palestine, if he picks up where Clinton left off he hasn't got a chance of success.
The Thai coast guard captured boats of illegal immigrants and imprisoned them secretly. The captors shot some, tortured others, then towed the rest out to sea in leaky boats with no engines and little food and water. Most of them died.
Global warming has doubled the death rates for trees in the Western US. This could make forests start releasing CO2 instead of absorbing it, exacerbating global warming.
The Marijuana Policy Project asks victims of marijuana prohibition to share their stories.
British broadcasters refused to play appeals for relief funds for Gaza.
The BBC says the appeal was vetoed by some of the 13 broadcasters. Which one? People in the US should demand each of these broadcasters say whether it supports or opposes this appeal, so that the broadcasters cannot hide behind each other.
Obama has ordered the closure of the CIA's secret prisons. This is starting to look like real progress, on the imprisonment issue.
However, imprisonment without trial is just one aspect of the injustice Bush has inflicted on Americans and others. We also need to restore the right to travel within the US without showing ID, and to communicate free of government surveillance except as authorized by specific court orders.
A Russian human rights lawyer and a journalist were assassinated in daylight right in the center of Moscow.
Paul Krugman calls on Obama to investigate the Bush regime's crimes — amd also explains how to avoid another great depression.
Obama has appointed an economic team intimately tied to hedge funds and the deregulation that led us to depression. His choices also suggest he will do nothing to tax the rich heavily on their main source of income, capital gains.
Obama wants direct talks with Iran, and will pursue reductions in US and other countries' nuclear weapons.
I am glad he is taking steps to avoid someday becoming Barack A-bomber.
COPA, the US internet censorship law signed by Clinton, has been conclusively ruled unconstitutional.
This should remind us that the threat to our freedom does not come only from Republicans.
Journalists are entring Gaza through Egypt since Israel still refuses to let them in. Here's an interview with a family in devastated Rafah.
Obama says he wants to close Guantanamo prison within one year. He also suspended the military tribunals to review the process they use.
Closing the one prison in Guantanamo will make my song Guantanamero dated, but will not necessarily render its point obsolete. We have yet to see whether Obama will end the practice of perpetual imprisonment without trial, or only move the prisoners elsewhere. We have yet to see whether he will put an end to these bush kangaroo courts, or just tinker with them.
The fact that Obama has never said he would correct these problems leaves me worried.
Israeli troops have left Gaza after causing 2 billion dollars of damage, and continue blocking the frontier so that no reconstruction is possible.
I begin to suspect that Israel's aim is to neutralize Hamas from attacking Israel, while making the siege of Gaza effectively permanent. If this occurs, Israel will be the only side regularly carrying out war crimes.
International human rights organizations, UN agencies, and Israelis are pushing to investigate Israeli war crimes in Gaza and have the individuals responsible prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.
Such prosecution is essential to show Israel that it has no license to kill civilians.
The Israeli Army has admitted that its previous denials were false and is investigating the use of white phosphorus in Gaza.
Once it is clear that prosecution of Israeli officials really will go forward, it might be a good idea to demand the surrender and prosecution also of Palestinians responsible for war crimes. It is just to hold both sides to the same standard.
For precisely that reason, Palestinians must not be prosecuted until all can see that Israelis will really face prosecution. Palestinians will only accept the court's jurisdiction over them if they see it protects them too. To use human rights laws and courts as a basis to attack the weak, while giving immunity to the strong for their violations, is a travesty of human rights.
The Clown regime is trying to weaken an EU directive designed to reduce CO2 emissions, so it can build more coal plants that will increase emissions.
Cheap energy encourages people to use more. To advocate cheap energy, when not all of it will come from renewable sources, is to advocate global warming. We must learn to recognize this, and recognize that anyone who makes low energy price the main goal is working against solving the problem.
Scientists were puzzled that East Antartica's coast was getting cooler despite global warming. Now more observations show that Antartica as a whole is warming fast. This means there is danger that the West Antartica ice sheet will shrink and flood our coastlines.
A writer faces three years in prison for insulting the king of Thailand.
CNN does not dare tell us what Nicolaides was convicted of saying, but this article gives that information.
It seems quite tame.
The same credit rating companies whose dishonesty was key to creating the financial crisis are now trying to bully governments not to take action to stop it.
Perhaps these companies should be declared "terrorist organizations" so that nobody can do business with them. No, I don't mean that. It is an injustice to declare any organization "terrorist" without a fair trial.
A US court rejected the RIAA's claim that every copy shared P2P means a lost sale.
The outcome is nonetheless an injustice. Noncommercial sharing, and noncommercially helping people to share, must be legal.
The Israeli holocaust memorial
now
has an Arabic web site so as to
rebut holocaust denial in Arab countries. It also has a Farsi site.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The confidence of Yad Vashem that these pages cannot be censored is misplaced. Censoring the Internet is no longer technically difficult for countries willing to spend some money and irritate their citizens (something which most Arab regimes do constantly). The main obstacle is that it makes them look bad to have censorship.
Every time a western "free" country censors the Internet, as the UK does, as Germany has decided to do, as the Australian government says it will do, it makes censorship respectable, and thus undermines the main obstacle to potential future censorship of the Yad Vashem site in countries such as Iran or Egypt.
One of the likely targets of European Internet censorship is holocaust denial. How ironic it would be if censorship backfires by encouraging censorship in other countries of truthful holocaust information.
UN Secretary General Moon harshly condemned Israel's attack on the UN relief compound in Gaza. Israel is sticking to the story that Hamas fighters were in the compound, which the UN staff say is a lie.
The Hamas victory rally was predicted by Uri Avnery.
Israeli troops shot
at civilians waving white flags.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Civilians in Gaza are dying from small burn wounds that keep on burning. These appear to come from white phosphorus munitions.
Stimulus Is for Suckers: We Need a Recovery Plan that Will Last for Years.
The FDA tobacco control regulation bill looks designed to curb smoking, but actually was carefully designed to protect the profits of the large tobacco companies.
In Rafah, Israeli bombing has destroyed entire neighborhoods.
Mitsubishi says it has a practical electric car ready for sale.
Jim Hansen says Obama has "four years to save the world".
Alternative currencies could be the way to escape from a depression.
48 members of one Palestinian family were killed in an Israeli attack.
They say they are not resistance fighters, but it would be most natural for them to become resistance fighters now.
We can't be sure from the information in this article that the genocidal slogans were written by the Israeli troops. Most Israelis speak pretty good English, so the bad English in these slogans leads me to wonder if they were written by Palestinians. This is not to say I can't believe Israelis would write such things, but I would like to be sure of this before condemning them for it.
The bank bailout continues to help bankers more than it helps homeowners, by paying top dollar for mortgages rather than paying what they are worth.
A branch of Reynolds tobacco company sells cigaretts made from organic tobacco, thus preying on Americans who believe that "natural" means "healthful".
I invite these people to experience a rub-down with natural, pesticide-free poison ivy.
Obama's choice for Attorney General supports Bush's formerly-illegal surveillance.
Obama has never said he would try to restore the rights that Bush took away from us. Unless he does this, or tries his best, I will not support him.
Obama must
choose between centrism and progress.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israel is organizing an "army of bloggers" to spread propaganda in English, French, Spanish and German.
The International Energy Agency has systematically underestimated the potential of wind and solar energy, apparently pandering to the oil and nuclear imdustries.
A study commissioned by 49 states into how the Internet affects sex between adults and teenagers concluded its effect is small. Most teenagers are not interested in sexual contact with adults. Those teenagers who find such relationships on the net are intentionally looking for them, typically because their lives are already troubled, and the Internet at most gives them an additional place to look.
In other words, one of the major excuses for trying to restrict the Internet is fear of a phenomenon that does not really exist.
The problem that the study found to really exist is bullying. We are fortunate that this problem, though very painful for its victims, is not such as to inspire a crusade for censorship or massive incarceration.
The US and the EU have taken very different approaches to poor neighbors. The EU's approach has led to good results; the US's approach has made the problems worse.
It would be difficult for the US to follow Europe's policies directly. The EU's acceptance of additional nations such as Spain was facilitated because it was conceived as a multinational community (less than a federation) rather than as a single state or a single nation. It already did its official business in several languages. Adding more nations was conceptually easy. No such structure is available in North America which Mexico could become part of. Also, where Spain was a small increase in the EU's population, that of Mexico is not so small compared with the US. The job of lifting it up would be bigger — though perhaps cheaper than conquering and destroying Iraq.
Nonetheless, there may be useful lessons to be learned here.
Corporations did not create the fungus that is wiping out the banana, but corporate short-sighted greed created a vulnerable system of agriculture and refused to take precautions.
By the way, I don't mind eating fish proteins in fish, so I have no objection to them in a banana. Some of the usual objections to genetic engineering do not apply when the unengineered crop is all dying. However, my worry is that the new breed would be patented, putting it off limits for poor people to grow for themselves, as is common in many tropical countries.
A US judge ordered
the release of a Guantanamo prisoner. But the government can appeal this decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Paul Kaye's mother in law was one of the few Israelis killed by a Palestinian rocket. He rejects the idea that this can justify the horror that Israel is now inflicting on Gaza.
Afghanistan could be Obama's quagmire if he doesn't take the opportunity to make peace.
The callousness of the Bush regime has left 200,000 war veterans homeless.
The same callousness of the Bush regime is what made many of them into veterans of an unjust war of conquest.
Thus, I am disgusted by the pious tone that many Americans take when describing soldiers in the Bush forces as "serving their country". I'm sure many of them thought, when they joined the army, that they would serve their country, but in conquering and subduing Iraq all they really served was Bush's clique of cronies. They were blinded and manipulated using the mystique of patriotism, and if we don't reject that mystique when we talk about what happened to them, we help a future president do this again.
Many UK ISPs have censored part or all of the Internet Archive. The idea that the public should be "protected" from certain ideas is more dangerous than anything they try to "protect" us from.
Previous articles suggest that not all ISPs in the UK practice censorship. People in the UK should take their business to the ones that do not.
Uri Avnery: Israel has become desensitized to the suffering of Palestinians by inflicting so much of it. This leads to tactics guaranteed to kill civilians in large numbers.
Obama's choice for Secretary of Transportation
is a flunky for
the industry he will be supposed to regulate.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The EU has decided to require fingerprints for passports.
Thus Big Brother marches on.
UN officials say Israel shelled the UN's Gaza relief program headquarters with white phosphorus.
Some Israeli bombs
burn
people to death. Others
suffocate people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
Another aid boat has
headed for Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the
old
link was broken.]
It was supposed to arrive a few days ago. Does anyone have reports of what happened to it?
The previous one was rammed by an Israeli naval ship and almost sank. (Note that Israel pretends that this did not occur, though we know it did.)
Germany has adopted censorship of the Internet.
The Clown regime has decided to extend Heathrow airport.
Note the absurdity of using long-term targets, such as canceling the increase of aviation's emissions by 2050, as solutions. They may be met because London is under water and not many people in the UK can afford to fly — or because humanity is no longer in condition to support an aviation industry. Otherwise in 2048 they will announce that these targets are impossible to meet.
By doing this, New Labour has betrayed its supposed stand for controlling global warming.
The
Lib Dems also oppose airport extension and support new trains.
Rejecting the Clown regime does not mean you have to vote Tory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israeli intelligence acknowledged that Hamas kept the truce and Israel broke it. Who will save Israel from itself?
An
Israeli Call for Urgent Humanitarian Action in Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israeli white phosphorous shells set fire to UN relief supplies. These fires are hard to extinguish, so the fire is likely to destroy all the supplies.
When Israeli officials say that Palestinians fired from the UN compound, they were folliwing the typical Bush practice: use any lie whatsoever that can't be conclusively disproved. And by excluding foreign journalists, they reduce the possibilities of disproving any lie.
An analysis of Wall Street since the 1980s
claims
that the main banks
acted as a cartel, creating a series of bubbles in order to profit
from them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
If banks systematically orchestrated a climate for borrowing, we cannot blame the borrowers for their own bankruptcy. They deserve to be given the title to their homes.
UK police want the power to search people randomly in buses and trains.
US police gained this power using "terrorism" as the excuse. It is no deterrent to terrorism, since any would-be bus bomber in the US faces almost zero chance of being questioned. The fact that there have been no such bombings in the US does not mean these measures have prevented them; rather it shows these infringements on our freedom are superfluous.
In the UK, the danger of violence is real but small compared with other risks in daily life. This proposal illustrates the Clown regime's desire to abolish all legal checks on the power of the state.
Clown's foreign minister has publicly rejected the idea of a "war on terror".
This raises the question of whether the Clown regime will restore the human rights that it has taken away in the name of the "war on terror". When Miliband speaks of "rule of law", does he mean the kind of law that makes it a crime to read certain texts, and can convict people of the crime of being "suspected"?
Human Rights Watch says the US can only reverse the harm Bush has done if Obama puts human rights at the center of his agenda.
This seems rather unlikely, given that he has avoided the issue completely on change.gov.
Sharing nude photos of themselves has become standard practice for US teenagers, and cruel prosecutors try to imprison them for years for this.
This demonstrates the basic absurdity and injustice of laws against "child" pornography.
If there is any truth to the idea that older men can "prey on" teenagers, it is only because the teenagers are inexperienced. The cure for that is not imprisonment. The cure is to help teenagers to be more sexual empowered, to understand sooner what they do and do not want in sex.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone your state legislator and call on him to respect the voters' decision to decriminalize possession of marijuana.
1/5 or more of the prisoners in Guantanamo
are
on hunger strike
to win the attention of Obama.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The official admission that prisoner al Qahtani was tortured is, in effect, the final proof of the evil thing that the US government has become.
As the article concludes, Obama has made no commitment to clean up the mess that Bush has made.
Meanwhile, the lawyers defending Bush's torture victims expect Bush to issue pardons for his officials who conspired to torture.
Israel used to capture former German officials and bring them to Israel for trial for war crimes. Some high-minded country might do the same thing with former US officials.
In the US, contempt of court can be a life sentence.
US citizens:
Phone your two senators and tell them, "Shame on you for endorsing Israel's war crimes and opposing any reasonable cease-fire."
Not one senator opposed this resolution.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also please phone your representative.
If your representative did not vote for the resolution please say thanks. Otherwise, say "Shame on you!"
The US congress passed almost unanimously an extremist resolution that ignores all of Israel's war crimes while accusing Hamas of some it has not committed. Its conditions for a cease fire are impossible, so Congress effectively voted to oppose any cease fire.
One of the few to oppose this motion
was
Congressman Kucinich,
who is the president the US needs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
With this resolution, Congress has in effect endorsed all past and future Israeli war crimes in Gaza, where Palestinian casualties number 1,000, and the Red Cross says the situation is "shocking".
Bolivia (joining Venezuela and Ecuador) has shown the proper reaction. But it will be hard to stop Israel's campaign of atrocities as long as the US shields it.
All the EU countries have given aid and comfort to these Israeli atrocities by disregarding the World Court's 2004 ruling about the Israeli annexation wall. The EU has started to put pressure on Israel, freezing discussion of improved trade relations.
However, just to delay planned measures to give Israel additional support is not enough to comply with other countries' responsibility in a matter like this.
Some of the rumors of foul play in Michael Connell's death turned out to be spurious.
Remembering Patrich McGoohan and The Prisoner.
Susan Crawford, in charge of prosecuting Guantanamo prisoners, concluded that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured while in US custody. For this reason she decided not to prosecute him.
These Bush-league kangaroo courts are fundamentally unjust, regardless of the circumstances of the accused individual. Nobody should be prosecuted that way.
Will Obama put a stop to them?
The arrest of a well-known community artist is part of a
persistent
police attack on photographers in the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The UN may set up a special court to consider Israel's bombing of Gaza.
Al Jazeera has released videos from Gaza under a free license.
The House Judiciary Committee report on the "Imperial Presidency" calls for investigation into Bush's abuses of power.
What worries me most is that Obama has not shown he will end these abuses.
Israel's government has conflicting explanations for why it is attacking Gaza — thus giving the lie to the claim that this is "self defense" — but even without a clear strategy, the army is sure it wants to escalate.
CO2 in the atmosphere has made corals in the Great Barrier Reef stop growing.
Cynthia McKinney's remarks at the DC "Let Gaza Live" march and rally.
Chris Arendt, former guard at Guantanamo, is touring the UK along with former prisoners to explain the torture that was practiced there.
The idea that informing the public about US government crimes could be "treason" shows the evil of the Bush regime. It's typical of tyrants that they condemn those who expose their crimes, rather than considering that they might be the guilty ones.
What Obama Can Learn from Europe (about energy, health care, and the economy). But not about human rights!
A Hamas leader says Hamas advocates "resistance, not revenge".
I note that the statement does not say Hamas is against all attacks on civilians. Thus, the Hamas policy stated here is not a policy to fully avoid war crimes. However, it behooves us to attend first to the larger war crimes committed by Israel.
Some Democratic senators
criticized
Obama's plan for stimulus
by tax cut incentives, saying it would fail to stimulate anything,
it would only reduce some taxpayers' bills.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israeli and international organizations are denouncing Israel's war crimes, but Israel expects the US to give it immunity regardless of what it does.
If Cheney is saying Obama sounds less worrysome now to him, does that leave any hope for the rest of us?
Thousands have asked to be co-owners of land that block the expansion of Heathrow airport.
CORE, once a sincere civil rights activist organization, has been turned into a front for oil company lobbying.
Banning smoking in public places reduced heart attacks by 41% in Pueblo, Colorado — and that counts everyone, not just smokers. The tobacco companies knew about this effect of cigarette smoke, but kept it secret for years, while organizing a compaign to mislead the public.
Lasantha Wickramatunga, assassinated editor of Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader, expected to be assassinated by the government, and wrote this editorial to be published afterwards.
Alien species are wiping out the animals and plants of Macquarie Island. When people eradicated the cats that were threatening to destroy many animal species, the rabbit population exploded and threatened many species of plants. Now the only solution is to eradicate the rabbits, mice and rats.
It is no suprise that myxomatosis did not wipe out the rabbits. The experience in Australia shows that a certain fraction are immune to it and eventually will rebuild the population. I wonder how people plan to get rid of them now.
This sort of problem is most notable in an island, but it is happening all around the world.
The Clown regime's claim, that B'liar didn't pressure his Attorney General to change his mind about the legality of the conquest of Iraq, is unraveling, leading to demands for an investigation.
Even 4 years ago, the danger in Israel from of terrorist attacks was small compared with that of traffic accidents. Since then, the disparity has only increased: the danger from terrorism has gone down but that of traffic accidents remains the same.
The same is true in the US. Perhaps Israel should stop trying to "help" us fight the "war on terror" and help us with the more important "war on cars".
Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, calls for ending arms exports to Israel.
I disagree with him on one point: if one is going to speak of the right of self defense, I think that the inhabitants of Gaza have a better clain to it than Israelis do.
Bush still defends torture, saying it is "necessary".
For the goal of getting correct information, torture is not necessary, nor even very effective. But it's great for extracting confessions, if you don't care whether they are true.
iTunes music files may contain no DRM, but they are poisonous.
Israel used white phosphorus smoke shells over civilian areas, and some civilians were horribly burned. Israel claims this did not occur and pretends those people do not exist.
Explaining the monetary system and why it has become unstable (OpenOffice presentation).
Prisoners in the US who complain, file lawsuits, or try to organize other prisoners, are sent to Supermax prisons where they face various kinds of torture.
When Supermax prisons are used by offials as an excuse to evade the legal requirements associated with disciplinary measures against prisoners, their use also constitutes a form of government dishonesty.
The UN resumed aid work in Gaza after receiving assurances that its staff will not be targeted.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, demand a truce in Gaza that includes ending the siege as well as ending violence by both sides.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also call the Obama-Biden transition office at 1-202-540-3000; press 2 to reach a person.
Everyone: sign this petition for a cease fire in Gaza.
China is using an increasing number of paid "internet commentators" in a sophisticated attempt to control public opinion.
Usually Bush has copied China, but this time maybe China is copying Bush.
Bush's "War on Terror" has quintupled global terrorism. Nonetheless, he calls it a success.
Israel rejected the UN cease fire resolution with one word.
As Gazans flee into the centers of cities, Israel is planning to invade them next. That is likely to kill thousands of civilians. I am sure the Israeli government knows this; it must be part of the plan. "Destroying Hamas" means destroying the people who support and join it, which means most of the people of Gaza.
Hamas rejected the resolution because it does not include an end to the siege of Gaza.
The siege is deadly, and an act of war, so a real truce must include ending it. However, it might make sense to accept an incomplete truce for a limited period of time during which a proper truce could be negotiated.
Naomi Klein calls for a boycott of Israel.
The article refutes the often-encountered counterarguments.
Barack
Obama: The Empire's New Clothes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Greenland's loss of ice
tripled
from 2007 to 2008.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
It's inevitable that Greenland's ice cap will decrease substantially even if we stop the emission of greenhouse gases. Greenland's ice will decrease even more if we continue emissions. What we don't know is how fast and how much sea level will rise as a result. One foot? Ten feet? Twenty feet?
The Israeli army ordered Palestinians to take shelter in a certain house, then shelled the house, killing 30 of them. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says this seems to be a war crime.
To justify atrocities, Israel lies about the circumstances. (For instance, "Palestinians were firing from that school" — but they weren't.) But these little lies don't operate alone: they fit into and perpetuate a basic big lie. Uri Avnery exposes both kinds of lies.
An award-winning independent film, "Sita Sings the Blues", has been blocked from release by the impossible demands of the copyright industry for old song recordings it uses. The producer aims decided to release it under copyleft in order to get it out.
There are rumors that Obama is planning to start private low-level discussions with Hamas.
This could facilitate a future initiative for peace between Israel and Palestine, but only in the distant future. It would be a step forward, at snail's pace.
The Washington Post actively boosted the housing bubble. Its choices of which economic problems to mention, and which do disregard, reflect the agendas of the businesses that it supports.
Obama is replaying the role of Robert Kennedy: distracting the public with vague promises of "change" so as to avoid changing much.
The steady decrease of Arctic ice appears to have crossed a tipping point, making disappearance of summer ice inevitable, 20 years earlier than was predicted. The loss of the ice causes increased warming and can disrupt weather patterns.
Robert Fisk writes about the lies we can expect Israel to use to justify its attacks, lies that it has used before.
True to form, Alan Dershowitz used some of those lies, and other absurd arguments as well.
Consider the absurdity of condemning Hamas for not building bunkers for the civilians in Gaza. How could they build bunkers for a million people while under siege? I cannot blame Palestinians for killing collaborators (i.e., traitors); that is normal for resistance movements during occupation. (In more settled times, accused traitors should be given fair trials and sentenced to prison if convicted.)
The one valid criticism of Hamas, based on facts I trust, is that Hamas launches rockets at civilians. Once in a while, those hurt or even kill someone. But this is not why Israel attacked Gaza. Hamas kept the truce while Israel partly kept it. But then Israel broke the truce in order to attack and destroy Hamas.
Police in the US use tasers and pepper spray as torture against people who are no threat.
Israel is following the self-defeating and discredited policies of the US "war on terror".
Despite Israel's carefully orchestrated PR campaign, only half of Americans support the attack on Gaza.
As Israel talks about the "need" to stop Hamas from rearming, the US plans to rearm Israel.
Professor Avi Shlaim tears apart the lies that Israel wants peace and is acting to defend itself.
When the Israeli army paused for 3 hours in its attack, medics found a carnage of civilians.
Meanwhile, those Gazans still alive have no water or electricity, and sewage is flooding.
UK Muslim leaders warn: tolerating Israel's attack on Gaza sends the message that "the mass murder of civilians can be justified if the right grievances are cited." This message can radicalize young Muslims.
Protestors who shut down Stanstead airport face the threat of a lawsuit for millions of dollars from Ryanair.
If they are subjected to such a judgment, one natural and appropriate response would be a vow of poverty, dedicating themselves to activism. That way, Ryanair would never collect its judgment.
A newspaper editor in Sri Lanka who made accusations of official corruption has been assassinated.
Even though the US has urged Israel to agree to a truce, it continues blocking any firm UN action to end the fighting in Gaza.
The reason these talks are going nowhere is that they are based on a faulty premise: namely, that Israel "needs" to prevent Hamas from rearming. To have a cease fire does not require stopping one of the sides from rearming. All Israelis need, to be safe, is an absence of fighting; to achieve that, Israel only needs to comply with the truce next time and not break it again.
Israel shelled
a UN school full of refugees and killed 40 of them.
Israel had previously told civilians to flee their homes and go
to that school.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The UN has suspended aid operations in Gaza after an Israeli tank shot a clearly marked UN truck and killed its driver.
Red Cross slams Israel over blocking access to rescue wounded civilians.
Israel has reneged on a deal to allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza, giving the absurd excuse that they should have gone there two months ago.
The real reason is the same reason any country bars foreign journalists: to hide the truth.
The result, however, is not entirely what Israel desires. Rather, all reporting comes from Palestinians, and it presents Israel in a very bad light.
But Israel has a response to that. Israeli spokesmen claim that each report of dead civilians is a lie, and there are no foreign journalists to check. So it is just Israel's word against Palestinians. Who do you believe? I generally believe the Palestinians, even though I recognize that occasionally they may be lying.
Obama has chosen supporters of repressive copyright policies for important jobs in law enforcement. It looks like he wants to give priority to enforcing unjust laws.
Nearly all Obama's choices for important government positions are known for pro-business, repressive or corrupt policies in their fields. Either he means to disregard them and not let them influence his policy, or he is planning to treat the public very badly.
Bush susprisingly has established a substantial conservation zone in the Pacific Ocean — though smaller than was recommended.
After Israeli shelling wounded 5 civilians in their homw,
the army has
blocked medics from reaching them for over 3 days. Their wounds have
become infected. Their relatives could not get water for them because
they were fired on whenever they tried.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama's Perilous Compromise with Wall Street Looters.
Big banks are using their bailout money to buy their competitors, rather than to make loans.
French president Sarcoma plans to eliminate French investigating magistrates, who in the past have been crucial to prosecuting official corruption.
This reminds me of Berlusconi, il ducino, who passed a law in Italy to prevent his own prosecution for corruption.
Republicans oppose a stimulus because they fear it will work.
Perhaps their fear is unnecessary. A US stimulus, in the globalized
business world that rule by business has created, may stimulate the
Chinese economy
but
not that of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Only a world-wide stimulus could bring back the sort of production that existed a year ago. But if that is possible, could the Earth stand it? What we really need to stimulate is the move to reduce CO2 pollution.
The Israeli government now all but admits that its attack on Gaza is meant to destroy Hamas.
Their reasoning is absurd, however. They may be able to destroy the infrastructure with which Hamas rules Gaza, but that will only produce anarchy, not different rule.
The comparison with the attack on the PLO seems apt, but it was not taken far enough. When Israel made Arafat seem weak, did that make Palestinians compliant? No, they voted for the more radical Hamas. If Gaza is impossible to rule, because Israel destroys the police, every radical group will have a field day.
But perhaps that is the real intention: so Israel will be able to cite these radical groups forever as an excuse for rejecting peace. Just as Bush and al Qa'ida used each other to maintain support, each citing the threat of the other, so Israel and the most radical Palestinian groups will do so.
Americans report on what they saw in Iran: despite condemning their government's policies on some human rights issues (which Iran's limited democracy does not allow them to change), Iranians do not want the US to give them "freedom and democracy".
The government of Iran has a sort of democracy which is very limited it its powers. It has some oppressive policies, which the elected leaders cannot control. However, it is not a dictatorship like Saddam Hussein's regime. Iranians would be justified in rebelling to win real democracy, but mostly they don't seem inclined to go that far.
I said in 2002 that I would support an invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein if (1) that's what Iraqis wanted and (2) we could be confident that the new government would respect freedom and democracy. Of course, neither of these two was the case.
It's the same for Iran.
One of the reasons newspapers hesitated to write about the complex financial derivatives and their dangers was that they feared libel suits for the slightest mistake.
Israel's ground attack in Gaza has brought the civilian death toll to 200.
Sometimes Israeli leaders claim this attack will wipe out Hamas, which would require killing everyone in Gaza. (Is that their intention?)
Sometimes they say the idea is to punish everyone in Gaza until they stop supporting Hamas.
This has been tried before and it never worked. The only thing that makes Palestinians drop their support for an organization is if it ceases to defend them.
The main effect of abstinence-only "sex education" is to discourage use of condoms.
This must be why Christian fanatics like them so much. They don't want abstinence, they want reproduction.
Israel's video proudly showed an attack on a Hamas truck with rockets, but the victims were really civilians.
Jet Blue and the TSA have paid $240,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit by a man who was ordered to cover up a shirt with Arabic writing. A TSA agent said that wearing Arabic writing was in itself making a threat.
Who Can Forgive the Crime of using the depleted uranium against Iraqis?
Wall
Street's Collapse -- and the "Ownership Society".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Gaza's population is in terror as Israeli bombs and shells fall in.
Many civilians have been killed. Those still alive cannot get electricity, food, or water.
Obama's silence about Gaza is already damaging his credibility in the Muslim world. They are recognizing that he is not very serious about "change".
Except when shoes get thrown at Dubya, the US media has essentially forgotten about Iraq.
Obama's choice for Secy of Education is not qualified to manage public schools, only to turn them into a business.
France is leading European pressure on Israel for a cease-fire in Gaza.
I detest Sarkozy, and refer to him as "Sarcoma", because of his attacks on human rights in France. However, his efforts now seem to go in the right direction. I am afraid, though, that the US will veto any UN security council attempt to restrain Israel.
The market crash
was
caused by institutions that betrayed the
public trust. Should we trust them again?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Activists are helping
people squat in foreclosed homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
The UK police can't search your house without a search warrant,
but no
warrant is needed to crack into your computer and search it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Of course, police should be able to search computers, just as they should be able to search houses. With a warrant issued by a judge
In the mean time, using GNU/Linux will make it more difficult for Big Brother to search your computer.
10,000 Israelis protested the attack on Gaza.
The governments which overthrew President Aristide and now occupy Haiti present this as a "humanitarian intervention", saying they had the "responsibility to protect" Haitians. In fact, the only Haitians they protect are thugs.
These general concepts are valid, but they did not apply to Haiti and Aristide. As usual, the US is acting like the world's corrupt policeman. An honest world policeman would instead have applied them to countries such as Zimbabwe and Burma.
An Israeli naval ship rammed a yacht carrying relief supplies for Gaza. The damaged yacht returned to Lebanon.
By abandoning the attempt to reach Gaza, the crew of the yacht accepted defeat. Given the louder news of Israel's attacks in Gaza, they failed to even get much publicity.
Perhaps they should have continued heading for Gaza until the yacht sank. Landing in lifeboats, they would have made news for sure.
Uri Avnery: Israel's election-manipulating attack on Gaza, following on a truce which Israel never fully carried out, will promote Islamic extremists across the Arab world.
Avnery also confirmed my suspicion that the "tunnel" excuse, for the Israel attack that provoked Hamas retaliation, was bogus. The real motivation for that attack was to get Hamas to start firing rockets again.
The Islamic extremists will shake the rule of US-supported dictators whose deeds support Israel against Palestine.
As one who opposes dictatorship and also opposes religious extremists, I see little to choose from, between those two sides. But I note that US policy has created the choice between them.
The campaign to prosecute Israeli leaders in the International
Criminal Court has
added
US-supported Egyptian president Mubarak to the list of defendents.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
A history
lesson for Obama, if he wants any chance to contribute to peace
between Israel and Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
An Israeli "surgical strike" on a "missile truck" killed 8 family members salvaging scrap metal, says the truck's owner.
If Israel follows the Bush pattern, it will never admit the mistake, and will go on pretending that every Palestinian it kills is a fighter.
It's cold in Gaza, but people must keep their windows open lest bombs blow them in. Everyone is afraid to go outside, since any place at all may be bombed.
When you point out that Palestinian rockets rarely hit anyone, Israeli hawks respond that they do terrify civilians. That's true -- but Israeli bombing does so far more. Shouldn't Israel therefore agree to a truce, and this time really keep it?
Obama continues Bush's attack on public schooling.
I cannot wholeheartedly defend public schools: compulsary schools inevitably share some characteristics of a prison, and many students feel imprisoned in them. However, that is no justification for the corporatization of public schools, which (if anything) makes the other problem worse.
Avrum Burg, former speaker of the Knesset, says that Israel is mired in Holocaust remembrance. It magnifies minor enemies while minimizing its strength, all to excuse disregard for its ethical responsibilities.
A group of Israelis from Sderot
has
made contact with Palestinians in Gaza to make videos about the hardships that they face.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
As regards the Middle East, Obama is copying Bush's bias. If he does not change this, he will have no chance of making progress towards peace.
James Hansen warns Obama that the current responses to the problem of CO2 pollution are inadequate.
Hansen talks of developing "third generation" nuclear reactors that would convert nuclear waste into something harmless. I am skeptical of this possibility, but I cannot say it is impossible. If it someday is achieved, it will eliminate the problem of dangerous nuclear waste. But that is only one of the dangers of nuclear power. There is also the danger of release radioactive materials in the event of an accident, or an attack on the reactor.
Amory Lovins argues that nuclear power is so expensive that no private investors will invest in it, and that renewable energy and increases in efficiency can achieve the same CO2 reductions much more cheaply if only society decides to invest in them.
The "Iraqi" government, showing a little independence, plans to shut down a camp run by the Iranian exile group, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq.
This instance illustrates how the distinction between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" is often a matter of what side you're on.
Bush says he wants an "immediate" cease fire in Gaza, but as usual his actions show this is not true.
Human Rights Watch is right that firing rockets at a civilian area, such as the town of Sderot, is a war crime. It cannot be excused. To condemn this is proper. What is not proper is to condemn this while disregarding much larger Israeli war crimes, such as the siege of Gaza.
Israel is preparing a ground attack in Gaza and rejects any idea of a cease-fire.
By contrast, Hamas remains open to a truce if it includes ending the siege. Israel agreed to do this as part of the previous truce, but never complied.
Open letter to Obama from Sidney Gluck , calling on him not to play the Israeli right-wing's game.
Israel bombed a school, full of students,
because
a Palestinian policeman was seen nearby.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Starting a war of aggression is "the supreme international crime" that "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Bush must be brought to the Hague and prosecuted.
Activists are helping
homeless Americans squat in foreclosed houses.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the
old
link was broken.]
Iraqi government leaders condemned Israel for bombing Gaza.
They have to accept continued occupation, since it's what keeps them in power, but Bush hasn't got enough control to make them hew to the party line, as the US does in Egypt and most other Arab countries.
Lewis Casey is facing trial for having a home chemistry lab. There's no law against "doing chemistry without a license", but the paranoia of the Witch-hunt on Terror effectively adds up to one.
Chemistry includes a lot of things besides explosives. But it would not surprise me if Casey occasionally made some explosives just to see them go bang. Just about every kid who is interested in chemistry wants to do this, because explosions are dramatic. That doesn't imply any intention to hurt anything with them. But a jury of non-chemistry-fans, caught up in the what-if heat of a witch hunt, see no long gap from "he could have" to "he will."
Clown plans to build a centralized Big Brother data base for all communication patterns in the UK, and give it to a private company.
Abuses are almost inevitable. Individuals will misuse the data and governments will misuse it.
Israel's Supreme Court ordered that Israel allow journalists to enter Gaza, when the Erez crossing is open.
However, the frequent closure of the crossing means that Israel can still effectively keep journalists out.
Israeli attacks have put Gaza's medical system under stress; meanwhile, due to the Israeli siege, the hospitalcannot get enough medicine, or spare parts to repair its generators.
A new kind of cement can remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
As with any such innovation, how much good it does to reduce global warming will depend on government policies. Once tests have verified it works properly, governments ought to act to rapidly make it universal. However, the danger is that the patent owners will act to maximize their profits rather than maximize usage.
Unmasking the "clean coal" bait-and-switch act.
Israel's PR campaign designed to blame Hamas for Israel's massive attacks on Gaza has been very effective with governments and others who don't know, or don't want to know, that it was Israel that broke the truce.
For years, the pattern has been that when fighting dies down, Israel reignites it.
Israel's attack on Gaza has been planned for months.
The planning must have begun before Israel broke the truce. Perhaps breaking the truce was part of the same plan. Attack Gaza, provoke retaliation with missiles, get public demand to "do something about the missiles", then attack even worse. Is all this violence designed to manipulate the Israeli election?
Israel rejected a renewed truce with Hamas just last week.
Israel broke the last truce in November.
Dan Rather has sued Bush for pressuring CBS to fire him.
Rather points out that Bush never denied Rather's story about Bush's draft-evasion. Instead Bush distracted the attention from himself by quibbling about the origin of the evidence that Rather presented.
If a similar scandal had surfaced for Clinton, the Conservative media would have pressed it unremittingly. Bush got away with changing the subject because there was no major Liberal media to do likewise. The mainstream media, back in 2004, reflected the corporate world's contentment with Bush.
Thus, this is not merely an instance of corporate-controlled right-wing media bias. It is an instance that occurred because this bias was pervasive.
While the hospitals in Gaza are turning away some wounded for lack of capacity and medicine, Israel bombed a medicine storehouse as well as a university and some government buildings.
Israel has killed at least 57 civilians in addition to many policemen. Meanwhile, Palestinian retaliation has killed 3 Israelis, which is comparable with the entire past year.
Rational Israelis who want safety recognize that the way to get it is peace. The Israeli government responds to lulls in violence with escalation because peace is not its goal.
The attack on Gaza has
moved
many Palestinians to protest. Some want
the Palestinian Authority to cooperate with Hamas. Some call the
Palestinian Authority quislings and support Hamas.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Eyewitness account of Gaza bombing.
The UK government says that many ex-cons become homeless
and commit crimes to get back in prison. To solve this
tiny fraction of the homelessness problem, the Conservatives
propose
to withhold some of the meager pay prisoners get for
their jobs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Using prisoners as workers to make products for sale to the public is a threat to the public. They are paid a pittance, and undermine the wages of free workers; meanwhile, their cheap labor is so profitable that it encourages the government-industrial complex to imprison more people. This is part of why the UK and the US have such a high fraction of the population in prison.
When the UN sent Richard Falk to Gaza to report on human rights,
Israel
held him prisoner
for 20 hours incommunicado and did not let him into Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The clear conclusion is that Israel wants to exclude from Gaza any witnesses to its attacks that it cannot slander as biased.
Perhaps the UN should ask Egypt to let their observers enter Gaza from there.
Israeli air attacks and shelling have killed almost 300 people in Gaza.
A substantial fraction of the attacks were aimed at police stations.
Police stations are usually found in the middle of the urban areas where police mostly work. Other buildings are right next to them. And citizens go to police stations for many reasons. So bombing them will generally harm lots of civilian bystanders.
Given the tremendous disparity between Israeli attacks and Palestinian attacks, asking both sides to "show restraint" misrepresents the situation by pretending that the blame falls equally on both sides. Israel has killed almost a thousand people in Gaza this year. Palestinian retaliatory attacks have killed a handful of Israelis. Both are wrong when they attack civilians, but Israel's violence is the cause of the problem.
The Clown regime wants world-wide Internet censorship.
It also wants to increase the danger of the UK's dangerous libel laws, which already chill free speech by making it so easy to win a judgment against criticism.
Data-mining schemes such as Total Information Awareness and its successors, which are used to justify massive violation of Americans' privacy by the state, are useless as well as unjust.
A run of three wet years is threatening many wildlife species in England.
Three wet years in a row will happen randomly once in a rare while. But it doesn't last, and better weather allows the species which were hit to bounce back. The danger of global warming is that it can cause these formerly rare events to become common.
Police in Zimbabwe admitted having arrested activists who previously they said were "kidnapped". They had tortured the activists trying to frame them for an assassination plot.
Not to forget: how Bush paid Republicans to go to Florida and sabotage the attempt to properly count the votes.
Mike Connell, formerly Karl Rove's chief IT consultant, died in an airplane "accident". He was going to testify about illegally deleted emails and vote-stealing in 2004.
Ahmadinejad's Christmas message called Western "Christian" governments hypocrites, saying that Jesus would fight against their empires. In response, some Westerners called him a hypocrite on account of his own bigotry.
They are both right.
Others condemned the Iranian government for refusing to recognize religious freedom. For instance, converts to Christianity there face execution. In general, all Muslim countries treat non-Muslims as second-class citizens, or worse.
Rockers to Press Obama on Music Torture.
Bishop Tutu rebuked the government of South Africa for supporting Mugabe's tyranny.
European colonization imposed foreign rule on African nations and subjugated the individuals of them. What we see is that the government of South Africa is more concerned about defending independence for African states than human rights for African people.
The Bush regime, having just got the "Iraqi" government to agree to keep Bush forces troops, is already planning to violate the agreement by falsely labeling combat troops as "support troops".
A small change in the language of the bank bailout enabled the executives to maintain their excessive pay, now at public expense.
Several animal rights activists were convicted in the UK for various acts against Huntingdon Life Sciences.
The article says they were convicted of "blackmail", but that seems to be an abuse of language, since blackmail means threatening to expose someone else's dirty secret. Although these activists did many things, it does not appear that blackmail was one of them, and the activity which they condemn was never a secret anyway. I wonder if this is an example of a legal lie, similar to "child pornography" and "animal rights terrorism".
I disagree with the animal rights movement; I support experimenting on animals in medical and biological research when that is the best way to do it. The issue here is not animal rights, it is how far people can go in protests against the activities of a company.
Some of these activities seem to be indeed wrong; others are legitimate forms of protest. They are unpleasant for the target, naturally, but nobody has a right to silence criticism just because of that. When companies demand this power, they become a threat to democracy. That has clearly happened here. It is noteworthy that this group moved beyond ordinary protest only after ordinary protest was unjustly prohibited to them.
All in all, I think the principal wrong here was committed by Huntingdon and the British government — not in experimenting using animals, but in denying the public the right to criticize.
A Pentagon program to make soldiers feel appreciated was transformed into a corporate branding program.
In an age when cities display their lack of pride by putting the names of corporations on stadiums, perhaps we should not be surprised that other government officials consider it normal behavior.
An 8-year-old Saudi girl was married off by her father without telling her. A judge ruled that her mother cannot ask for a divorce for her, and that she is too young to do it herself.
UK police secretly made an audio recording when they arrested shadow minister Damian Green.
I think police should be required to make and keep recordings of all their interactions with members of the public. Police are given special power, both explicitly and implicitly (through the tendency of jurors to believe whatever police say on the witness stand). This power leads to systematic abuse. It is fitting to accompany this special power with special requirements, such as not having the same right to privacy that other citizens deserve.
Seeing Bush and Cheney out of office is not enough. For our future's sake, we must hold them responsible for their crimes.
They have committed mass murder — certainly in Iraq, and perhaps in the World Trade Center — and they have tried to cover it up, at least by not counting the people killed in Iraq. If convicted in a fair trial, they must be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Obama's team claims nobody discussed buying the senate seat that Blagojevich can offer — and that nobody even was aware he wanted to sell it.
I am ready to believe that they never offered to buy it. But this claim strains my credulity.
The Green Party explains Obama' lukewarm support for gay rights.
The Green Party's
proposals
for avoiding environmental disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
How Facebook isolates people by substituting the tag of "friend" for real friendship — while collecting personal data for CIA and marketing use.
The dean of Iranian bloggers was arrested because he had visited Israel.
This is as unjust as arresting Americans for visiting Cuba.
The UK state and media increasingly to support the established church, even though public support for it is almost vanishing.
Clown's eminent advisor resigned in disgust in response to the government's deep lack of respect for human rights.
Tasers have killed 400 people in North America since 2001.
Calling them "nonlethal" makes users trigger-happy.
Newfoundland cod are heading for extinction even if fishing is banned — perhaps because the population is too low to overcome the effects of predation by seals. In other words, we knocked it down so far that it can't ever rise again.
So many people want to buy "the same shoes that were thrown at Bush" that Baydan Shoes has hired 100 more workers.
Perhaps they should make a model that has a picture of Dubya on the bottom of the sole.
Israel is tightening the siege of Gaza, and the main Israeli election candidates said they would try to attack and defeat Hamas militarily. It cannot succeed in this except by killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, or maybe more. I fear that that is what it will now do.
Israel says the purpose of the siege is to end Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza. Even if it worked, it would not be justified, since the siege is a bigger war crime than the rockets. But the only thing which has ever succeeded in ending them was the truce. Israel did not obey its commitment to end the siege of Gaza, but the Palestinians kept the truce anyway — until Israel started the fighting again.
There are proposals to "bail out" the big ISPs, which have already
failed
to keep their commitment to build out broadband in the US,
while trying to eliminate competition and regulation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
250 activists that oppose logging and deforestation in Brazil face threats of assassination.
It seems to me that the only way to end deforestation in Brazil is to totally prohibit export of timber from affected regions, and monitor major roads and rivers so that no one can smuggle out substantial amounts.
Arguing that Obama's plan to win the war in Afghanistan is futile.
I supported the US invasion of Afghanistan, as did most people in Afghanistan at first. I supported it, not because of the 9/11 attacks, but to end the Taliban's totalitarian regime. So I wonder now if it might have been a success, supposing the US had given more funds for reconstruction and had not boosted the fundamentalist cause by attacking Iraq.
In any case, it seems to have gone badly wrong now, and the public in Afghanistan no longer support the US. It seems there are also moderate Taliban now (moderate by Afghan standards). Rather than fighting them, it would be better to make peace with them.
Students in Maryland are using fake license plates to trick speed cameras into issuing fines against other drivers.
I wonder what license plates belong to the officials that would vote on whether to abolish speed cameras in Maryland.
The banks that tried to force Cleveland Mayor Kucinich to sell the municipal electric company have folded, but Cleveland still owns its power company and Kucinich is still in Congress.
We need him in the White House.
The Colombian army assassinated an indigenous political leader's husband by shooting him while he was driving.
The army made
Bushesque excuses, which would be no justification
even if the facts were true. But they are lies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Colombian army under President Horrible acts as an army of occupation for the US.
International rejection is
pushing
manufacturers out of the Israeli "settlements"
in Palestinian territory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bush and his men
must
be held accountable for their crimes in Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
One point in the article requires correction: it assumes that Dubya was elected president. There is plenty of evidence that he stole both elections.
Although the agreement between the
Bush forces and the "Iraqi"
government lasts only till 2011, some in the "Iraqi" government are
already talking
about extending the occupation of their country.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
In the coming Israeli election, none of the major parties offers to make peace.
The small differences between Israeli political parties resemble the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties in the US.
Zaidi's brother denies that Zaidi apologized for throwing shoes at Bush.
The beating that Zaidi received is typical of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. For Shi'ites and Sunnis to agree is unusual, which means that Zaidi has helped his country in another way.
A Briton falsely accused of murder, and based on hardly any evidence, received an apology from the police. His case was dismissed by a judge because the police never had any evidence.
The same thing is supposed to happen in the US, but it often doesn't.
The truce in Gaza is officially over.
De facto it ended in November when Israel attacked and Palestinians responded.
It only half worked, since Israel never ended the deadly siege of Gaza.
Obama continues to support making ethanol for cars from corn, a practice which feeds cars at the expense of feeding people.
Zaidi apologized for throwing shoes at Bush after being beaten and wounded in prison.
Rivalries inside the "Iraqi" government have resulted in arrests of officials. It's not clear why.
The rich countries
approved
60 million dollars for CO2 reduction projects in poor countries. That's good,
but it will take billions to make enough reductions to avert
catastrophe.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Rescue auto companies for long term contribution to society,
not
for short-term profitability.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
150,000 Haitians
protested
to demand the return of their elected President Aristide,
who was kidnapped by US agents and taken to exile.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
US hospitals and insurance companies are very profitable, and they are
using
deceptive arguments to block health care reform.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Republicans are terrified of single-payer health care reform. They think that if Democrats succeed in implementing this, they could permanently gain political support.
The Democratic Party needs to do more than this before I will support it, but I do support single-payer health care reform.
Nixon sabotaged Vietnam peace talks in 1968 to get himself elected.
US mainstream media pay no attention.
In France, a noncommercial ISP sticks its finger in Big Brother's eye.
160 countries voted to block tobacco companies from "helping" plan activities to reduce tobacco use.
The NATO command in Afghanistan wants to merge its news and propaganda offices.
Most progressive Americans have not woken up to the fact that Obama's advisors and appointees are all right-wing.
Reportedly some Somali pirates now demand compensation for pollution dumped by rich countries on Somali shores.
If the facts are as charged, the demand is a valid one. However, since the pirates were in it for the money before, I doubt the sincerity of their altruism now.
Protestors shut down Stanstead Airport, near London, opposing airport expansion which would lead to more flights and more CO2.
Note the irrelevance of the response by the aircraft industry. It sounds impressive, but it does not alter the fact that more flying means more CO2 emission.
Note also the woman who took advantage of cheap flights to have a second home in France — and now resents being inconvenienced in traveling there. If they extend Stanstead airport, more people will buy second homes in France, and they will expect to travel there more often.
Chinese officials make a practice of committing people to mental hospitals if they complain.
We can trace this to the general Chinese penchant for covering up problems rather than correcting them.
Australia censored a Simpsons knock-off cartoon, convicting a person for possessing a copy.
Arundhati Roy tells about the oppression carried out by the Indian government in many parts of India: military occupation, torture, and systematic labeling of dissidents as "terrorists". She says she could be arrested as a "terrorist" just for the books she owns.
(Arresting people for having copies of publications has already happened in the UK.)
When a Greek policeman shot and killed a youth for no reason, it set off massive riots based on other long-building resentment.
The Clown regime is trying to corrupt and delay the parliamentary investigation into the recent arrest of an opposition "shadow" minister. So the opposition parties have refused to participate in the investigation.
Five Blackwater guards will finally face charges for the Iraqis they shot.
Five Guantanamo prisoners say they want to make confessions about involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
At least one of them was tortured, and maybe the others were too. Since torture extracts false confessions, it is hard to tell whether these people were really guilty. Maybe some would relish a martyr's death and are willing to make a false plea to get it. Maybe some would prefer death to life in prison.
If they really are guilty, can they implicate co-conspirators in the Bush regime?
Coal-power protestors in the UK were acquitted after a peaceful protest. The jury agreed that the coal plant would do more harm than the protest did. Now the Clown regime wants to change the law so as to imprison more protestors.
New Labour has carried out an unremitting attack on human rights in Britain for ten years, and they will not stop.
Cheney continues to lie to justify his invasion and conquest of Iraq and to lie about torture and formerly-illegal wiretapping.
Cheney, along with Bush, ought to be sent to the Hague for trial for crimes against humanity. But I don't expect Obama to do this, any more than he will restore the human rights that Bush and Cheney took away from Americans. We must continue to denounce the US government as the enemy of our freedom.
The bank bailout was a ripoff, and the need for it seems to have been exaggerated. Meanwhile, Congress does nothing to help ordinary Americans.
Making Light: Free Muntadar Zaidi now!
When Gary Webb broke the story that the CIA protected drug smuggling
for the Nicaraguan Contras, his newspaper
was pressured into
disavowing the story. In 1998 an official investigation effectively
admitted the charges were true.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Despite this vindication, Gary Webb never could get a job as a reported again, and ultimately killed himself.
Using music as a torture sounds like a joke, but loud music 24 hours a
day can
drive people crazy and make them give false confessions. Some
musicians condemn this; others still joke and do not understand.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
CIA officials that support torture are campaigning for their own to be considered for the job of heading the CIA.
The US has a duty to punish those that practiced torture and those that authorized it. If the US does not punish them, other countries must punish them.
NBC continues presenting one of the Pentagon's paid pundits as an objective and independent expert, neglecting to mention that he has a financial interest in the war. NBC also does not mention that it is owned by GE, which also has a financial interest in the war.
It is worth making a substantial effort to avoid watching the US mainstream media, since they are designed to mislead people, and it takes work to overcome their effects.
When scientist Nancy Olivieri reported liver damage from a drug made by Apotex pharmaceuticals, the company sued her and forced her to promise not to say any more about it. She didn't, but the company has sued her again, claiming that merely by attending conventions about how companies influence research, she is "defaming" them.
It is clear that the company is only using its greater resources to procure injustice in the courts. Such lawsuits against researchers should be explicitly banned. Imposition of nondisclosure agreements on scientists studying the health effects of anything whatsoever must likewise be banned.
Furthermore, university medical research should not be funded directly by companies. Instead, governments should tax the companies and use the money to fund the research.
Repeated US bombing of civilians in Afghanistan, and the arrogance of US troops, are building support for the Taliban.
When the UK (and US and India) criticize Pakistan's intelligence agency for supporting terrorist groups, they must not overlook their own acts which created the anger that fuels the terrorism.
Bush is trying to pretend he was an innocent victim of mistaken intelligence when he decided to invade and conquer Iraq.
There is sufficient proof that Bush pressured the CIA and other agencies to make this "mistake."
Congressional democrats dropped public-interest conditions from the proposed auto-company bailout.
Beggars can't be choosers: the auto companies are not acting like beggars. If they think they can afford to make demands, then they must not believe they are in such desperate circumstances as to need government help.
The UN declared Jamaat-ud-Dawa to be a terrorist organization, and
Pakistan
shut it down.
If Jamaat-ud-Dawa is indeed a terrorist organization, it should be
shut down, but first it should get a fair trial. To administratively
declare an organization illegal is a violation of freedom of association.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The author of Liar's Poker explains how Wall Street executives fooled even themselves into valuing worthless assets.
The Australian protest against censorship.
The MPAA has asked Obama for a disastrous attack on the freedom of the Internet.
Democrats have a tendency to kowtow to movie companies, so the danger may actually be worse than it was.
Mexico will demand
fingerprints from all cell phone users. Mexicans should refuse to comply with this law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The rest of the provisions of this law seem reasonable, but nothing can justify demanding fingerprints without reasonable grounds to suspect them of a crime.
How the Bush campaign paid people to riot and stop a recount in Miami in 2000.
I read recently that one of the organizers of this act of political fraud said that Bush's conduct made him regret it.
Some Indian politicians are trying to use the Mumbai attacks as an excuse to start a war which they desire for other reasons.
Are they following Bush's example?
Remembering the twisted logic that the Supreme Court employed to make Bush president by refusing to count Florida's votes.
Keep in mind that the only reason Bush was able to come close enough to do this is that Katherine Harris intentionally disenfranchised 50,000 eligible Florida voters.
Even a small regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan would produce a devastating nuclear winter. It wouldn't wipe out humanity, but it would cause suffering around the world.
Chiquita Banana was found guilty in US court of hiring the paramilitaries to kill people in Colombia. Then relatives of the victims began to sue. Eric Holden, Obama's choice for Attorney General, defended Chiquita Banana in these lawsuits.
In Cameroun, police attacked anti-corruption protestors preemptively, confiscating their protest signs, and injured some so badly that one is in a coma.
Arundhati Roy compares India's anti-terrorist hysteria with that of the US. India's frenzy about Islamic terrorists draws attention away from the much larger right-wing Hindu terror attacks against Indian Muslims and Christians, whose leaders go unpunished or get re-elected.
The EU has agreed on a policy of substantial CO2 cuts, though not sufficient. It could have done more, but heavy industry demanded to make no concessions.
The inquest into the police killing of de Menezes was spoiled by the coroner, who forbade the jury to give a verdict of "unlawful killing."
We cannot tell whether the jury would have wished to return that verdict. I think they should make a public statement about the question.
The jurors were not allowed to learn that the Menezes family had decided to boycott the trial because they found it biased already.
A student protestor in Patras
says
that fascist gangs supported by the police are responsible for the violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Since the epidemic of cholera in Zimbabwe could be a motive for intervention, Mugabe claims it does not exist.
Israeli refusenik Tamar Katz refuses to wear a military uniform. The prison
punishes
her by not letting her change her clothing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama's preferred choice for Secretary of Education is totally unqualified. Appointed to run school systems like businesses, he caused only trouble.
This may relate to his conservative ideas of economics.
Greenland has voted for independence from Denmark, motivated by the temptation of valuable minerals that could be mined if the ice melts.
If the Greenland ice melts enough to give access to these minerals, the worldwide disaster will be so great that Greenland will have trouble selling them.
Pakistan raided a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp and arrested one of the men accused of planning the Mumbai terrorist attack.
Michael Moore: nationalize the car companies and turn them toward building green transportation.
How globalization makes this depression different from the depression of 1929.
Everyone: tell
Bank of America and Congress that the bailout funds should be
used to provide loans to keep the economy going.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
You can contact Congress through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Computer experts who can be in DC on Dec 15: We need you to offer expert testimony for protest defendants accused by lying police.
Uri Avery spells out for Obama precisely how to achieve peace between Israel and the Arabs, and what the deal must look like.
The details are already clear. For success, just add courage. Does Obama have such courage? We will soon see. If he continues the policies of previous presidents, accepting Israeli demands the Palestinians concede everything before negotiations start, there will be no peace.
The Iraqi government is
inviting
foreign companies under all flags to invest in Iraqi oil production.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
This could mean that Bush and his cronies have not won all they hoped for. They sought total control of Iraqi oil for themselves alone. But if it is a partial defeat for Bush, that does not make it much of a victory for Iraqis, who will nonetheless lose control to foreign companies.
During Argentina's economic crisis in 2001, workers occupied many bankrupt, closed factories and put them back into production. Many of these factories continue to operate under worker control.
Several UK ISPs are blocking access to Wikipedia in an act of absurd prudery.
Yegor Gaidar analyzes
the collapse of the Soviet Union in economic terms: failure to produce
enough grain for the urban population, and dependence on oil to get
money to buy grain. When the price of oil went down, and subject
populations tried to break away, the state had no way to maintain
its power.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The forced collectivization of the Soviet Union was directly responsible for the low grain production. According to Gaidar, its invasion of Afghanistan led Saudi Arabia to reduce the price of oil.The cost of matching President Reagan's arms buildup may have played some role, but Gaidar does not give it a major role.
Americans should stop giving Reagan credit for making the Soviet Union collapse, and recall Reagan as the president who betrayed America's honor by selling weapons to terrorists to ransom hostages.
The occupation of Gaza as an issue of human rights.
The Bush forces' agreement to hand over prisoners to the Iraqi government conflicts with legal requirements that prisoners cannot be handed over to states which don't provide justice.
2008 will be the coolest year of the decade, by random fluctuation. But it would have been considered a very hot year in the 1980s.
Why defend the freedom to say things that some people find disgusting. I think that the first few paragraphs, ending in the line that says "Jess", are a quotation from someone else. It would be clearer to make that explicit.
Many Americans were misled into signing mortgages which they now cannot pay.
This isn't the first time. The wave of farm foreclosures under Reagan, which wiped out the US institution of the family farm, victimized farmers who had followed government and institutional advice to take out loans. When institutions lead people into danger and harm, it is unjust to place all the responsibility on the victims.
The European human rights court ordered the UK to discard the DNA samples and fingerprints kept from people who were arrested but not convicted of a crime.
An Atheist outdoor sign that presents a general criticism of religion was stolen.
Many US Christians don't think Atheists should be allowed to express disagreement with them.
Rioting Israeli settlers near Hebron shot and injured two Palestinian men before other Palestinians subdued them. Then the insecurity forces of the nearby settlement (or should we say "colony") arrived, and took the side of the shooters.
The committee to protect journalists reports that online journalists are now almost half of all the journalists imprisoned for political reasons in the world. Imprisonment of journalists increased greatly after the world-wide wave of repression unleashed by Bush as a response to the 9/11 attacks.
Bush forces
personnel have sued Halliburton and KBR for making
them sick by
knowingly supplying contaminated food and water.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
It looks like Bush will not launch a war against Iran, but the neocons may get Obama to do it.
Australians:
sign this petition against internet censorship in Australia.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The leaders of a US charity for poor Palestinians have been convicted
of "supporting terrorism" after a
trial that was obviously unfair.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Anyone seriously trying to help poor families in Palestine will inevitably help many families whose fathers were killed by Israeli troops. The Israeli troops will always say they were killed because they were terrorists, whether it is true or not. Thus, the bogus arguments used here will always be available to punish any charity that helps Palestinians.
A former Bush forces interrogator says, as an expert, that torture is an ineffective way to get intelligence.
Torture is very effective for the goal of getting confessions, if you don't care whether they are true or false. And very effective for venting hatred.
Should the US nationalize the big three auto companies?
It would cost less than the bailout they want.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Iraq's parliament
voted to approve the continuing occupation by the
Bush forces, subject to a referendum to be held next June.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Sad to say, this means that Bush's cronies have more or less won their war to privatize and loot Iraq, oil and all. They are likely to control the economy as long as the government in Baghdad is a puppet that "needs" the Bush forces to stay in power.
I've read elsewhere that the pact allows mercenaries working for the Bush forces to continue to enjoy immunity from all law. It is only the contractors working for other agencies that will be subject to Iraqi law. Thus, mercenaries raped by other mercenaries will continue to get no justice.
Clown has taken belated steps to protect homeowners from losing their homes.
So when will the US do this?
Journalist Amira Hass entered Gaza illegally by boat because Israel
does not allow Israeli or foreign journalists to go there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
There are few legitimate reasons for a government to keep journalists out of a region, and none can apply to Gaza. The reason is clearly that Israel wants people not to know what its siege is doing.
Nixon's tapes, recently published, show he was just the vindictive and paranoid creep that his reputation portrays.
Australians protested in the streets against government plans to censor the Internet.
If Australia censored the Internet, they won't be able to rely on holding protests that will be seen anywhere but in the streets.
Brazil has a new plan to cut deforestation in the Amazon.
The old plan has been effective enough to generate an uprising. Normally I would sympathize with the people rather than the government; but this is an uprising of fools who seek in their short-term thinking to destroy something precious.
Lieutenant Colonel Vandeveld, who resigned as a prosecutor in Guantanamo, is giving interviews: "We had abandoned our American values and defiled our constitution."
The defilement is not the Guantanamo prison camp as such, it is the unjust practices carried out there. Closing the Guantanamo prison will make no difference if the US does not cease and reject these practices. Will Obama do this?
Clown's latest attack on human rights: 10 years in prison for publishing information about policemen "likely to be useful to terrorists". This is unjust, not only because it is censorship, but also because it is vague. It seems to be intended to stop dissident groups from resisting the policemen who harass them, as well as the police provocateurs that infiltrate dissident groups hoping to lead them to do something they could be prosecuted for.
FITwatch, which reports on some of those police, has called for a campaign of systematic defiance.
The UK government, for its persistent disregard of human rights, has lost its claim on anyone's support or loyalty, much like the US government and many others.
Obama's official "transition site", change.gov, lists
many
intended policy changes. None of
them has to do with recovering the freedoms that Bush took away from us.
Contrast the large section on "Homeland Security" with the completely absent
section on "Civil Liberties".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
I looked in other possible categories and saw not a word about ending imprisonment without trial and "enemy combatants". Not a word about stopping the government from spying on citizens without a search warrant. Not a word about the right to travel anonymously. Not a word about RFIDs, Real-ID, or other proposed or actual policies that subject Americans to surveillance.
Obama is just the man to continue the harm that Bush has done to our freedom. Bush, through his obvious dishonesty and greed, aroused strong opposition. It was unable to protect our freedom, but it tried. If Obama refrains from evident lies and from wars of conquest that kill thousands of Americans, he may find it easy to continue Bush's campaign to establish a society of total surveillance.
Americans who love civil liberties and hate Big Brother: get used to thinking of Obama as another Bush.
Israel has blocked a humanitarian aid ship from docking in Gaza.
Israel slightly relaxed the siege of Gaza during the months of the cease fire but did not end it. Then Israel broke the cease fire, and cites subsequent Palestinian retaliation as the reason for making the siege worse.
Obama is not likely to do anything to protect us from NSA spying unless we push him hard.
Clown's proposals to reduce CO2 emission in the UK are too weak. Worse, they focus on long-term targets instead of action starting soon.
Muslim condemnations of terror attacks on civilians in Mumbai, India.
India says it has proof that the Mumbai attackers were from Pakistan and connected with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group that has in the past been supported by ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.
Given that fanatical Muslim terrorists have carried out many bombings in Pakistan this year, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, wouldn't it make sense for the two governments to work together against this threat?
Amnesty International reports that thousands of Iraqi prisoners of the Bush forces face the threat of torture or execution if they are handed over to the Iraqi government.
This is a paradoxical issue because whenever the Bush forces leave Iraq, they will have to do something or other with their prisoners, such as hand them over to the Iraqi government, or free them. The problems of handing them over are no argument for keeping the Bush forces in Iraq.
Those who have been held without charge should generally be freed.
It
appears that Obama will not prosecute US torturers for war crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Any US pressure to prosecute war criminals of other countries will be hypocritical and useless unless we clean our own house first.
Some of Obama's advisors are
trying to make imprisonment without trial a permanent
and normal part of US law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama Should
Oppose Preventive Detention.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
I visited change.org and supported the proposal for a new investigation of the 9/11 attacks and who was responsible for them, and I posted a note urging others to support it too. The next day I received a message saying that change.org had deleted this proposal, saying that it did not propose a policy change.
While an investigation is not, in and of itself, a policy change, this investigation is essential for moving forward to change many unjust and dangerous policies that were established to "protect" us from the supposed danger according to the US government's suspect claims about the attack. Bush's whitewash investigation reinforced this basis for maintaining and exacerbating those policies. An honest investigation of those claims is therefore vital for future policy decisions.
After the Yes Men's spoof New York Times issue criticized the diamond monopolist De Beers, that company tried to get it shut down by attacking the registrar of its domain name, www.nytimes-se.com.
US citizens: The site change.org allows people to propose and support political ideas. One that I supported is a new investigation of how the 9/11 attacks were carried out, and who was responsible.
As individual suspects, Bush and Cheney must not be punished without being convicted in a fair trial. As the level of politics, however, given that they blocked and corrupted the investigation into their possible guilt, we must consider them guilty until a real investigation is allowed.
Update! Shortly after I voted for that proposal and wrote this note, change.org deleted the proposal, saying that it does not fit the site because it is not a policy change.
While that investigation is not, in and of itself, a policy change, it is essential for moving forward to change many unjust and dangerous policies that were established to "protect" us from the supposed danger according to the US government's suspect claims about the attack. Bush's whitewash investigation reinforced this basis for maintaining and exacerbating those policies. An honest investigation of those claims is therefore vital for future policy decisions.
Voters say that
voting machines are flipping Democratic votes to Republican.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bush got the Iraqi government to
agree in private on a treaty
to continue the presence of the Bush forces,
but the Iraqi cabinet refuses to approve it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The concessions of immunity from prosecution went too far.
EU citizens: The European Parliament is working hard to help record companies mistreat music listeners and musicians even worse. Call or write your MEP to oppose this directive.
Warning: this article makes the grave mistake of using the term "intellectual property". This propaganda term spreads bias and confusion; for instance, it lumps copyright law together with other unrelated laws. Every use of the term "intellectual property" spreads bias and confusion.
For the sake of clear thinking, we should avoid using the term ourselves, and when we cite a name which uses the term, we should without fail explain that the name embodies confusion.
UK police arrested an opposition shadow minister for publishing government secrets to criticize the government — normal practice for opposition MPs in the UK political system.
The Marijuana Policy Project sued the "drug czar" for distributing false information to oppose the medical marijuana initiative in Michigan.
The
End of Bailout Transparency Already?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
It has become quite common for popular musicians to
license their music for use in commercials.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
That Ms Klein poses the question of whether iTunes could "save" something suggests she is not aware of the issue of Digital Restrictions Management as a threat to people's freedom.
Urging Obama to apologize to those whom Bush imprisoned without trial.
Muslim fanatics shot over 100 people in various sites around Mumbai in what appears to have been coordinated terrorist attacks.
It seems that some of the terrorists have been captured; if the police do not torture them into making statements that might be false, we may learn something from them about who planned these attacks.
The long list of Iraqi academics who were killed during the violence unleashed by Bush's conquest of Iraq.
Support the courageous Israelis who have gone to prison rather than serve in the army of occupation.
No matter how nasty a practice is, it will occasionally benefit someone deserving. For instance, the Big Brother surveillance in NYC subway metro-cards provided evidence to support Jason Jones' claim that he was elsewhere at the time of a shooting he was accused of.
Even though the MTA surveillance records have apparently "proved" Jones' innocence, the prosecutor has not dropped the charges. Is he planning to argue that Jones arranged for someone else to use his metro-card?
That accusation might be far-fetched in this case, since it appears that the shooting was not premeditated. But in another case, one that involves a planned killing, don't expect a DA to be impressed if your metro-card "proves" you are innocent. On the other hand, if your metro-card suggests you were in a position to commit a crime, you can count on the prosecutor to cite that as evidence.
In a just world, surveillance evidence would generally promote the cause of justice. But in a prejudiced world, it will generally harm those who are weak.
Obama — Bush in blackface?
South African President Mbeki killed an estimated 300,000 people through his policy towards medicine for HIV.
Everyone:
support Israeli conscientious objectors
who are refusing to serve the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Pakistan's army is fighting the Taliban in Bajur. The Taliban shoot civilians that don't support them, and the army kills them with aerial bombing.
Alan Greenspan admits he was wrong to support deregulation of financial derivatives.
Support the Appel de Blois, which calls for an end to laws that censor
views on historical events.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
There is substantial opposition even within the UK government
to the
plans to record who speaks to whom in the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
One crucial point here is the ability to locate a cell phone "within yards" even without help from its GPS. If you want to use a cell phone without being tracked, you will need to use a tightly focused antenna to talk to a cell tower that is not near by.
I have never had a cell phone, but since OpenMoko cell phones became available I have been considering whether to get one. Now I am leaning towards refusing, because I do not want to carry a cell phone that Big Brother will be able to identify as mine. Instead I will use pay phones or ask people around me to make calls for me on their cell phones.
In one respect, Bush has won the war in Iraq: the Iraqi government is giving foreign oil companies a big stake in Iraqi oil and natural gas exports.
Americans are so bombarded with news that they become overloaded and shun seeing any more of it.
This makes the display of right-wing TV news in public places even more sinister. It not only misinforms people, it also makes them avoid any further information that might correct the distortions and twisted assumptions.
The Iraqi government has arrested and imprisoned so many people, and keeps them in so little space, that some prisoners must stand so others can sleep.
There's no need to torture prisoners one by one when the prison conditions amount to torture.
Auto company executives went to Washington to ask for handouts, but they have not set aside their expensive private planes.
Israeli settlers stole Ibrahim Suleiman Muhammad Salah's horse,
so he went to the (Israeli) police. They fined him for complaining.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
A series of Israeli eviction orders has
driven the al Kurd family out of one home after another,
but the father of the family is no longer
affected. The stress exacerbated his medical problems and he died.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
By contrast, when settlers are supposed to leave an illegal "outpost",
they can delay for years by insisting on being handed new homes first.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
These illegal outposts were built with Israeli government funds.
Bush is trying to sabotage the Clean Air Act.
A cholera epidemic is spreading in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe in effect holds the population hostage.
This is sort of the situation where an honest policeman of the world would invade and rescue the hostages. The US is not interested because Zimbabwe has no oil.
The Brazilian government is making a real effort for the first time to protect the Amazon rainforest. The people who make a living from cutting it down fought back massively.
The pain they will suffer from ceasing to destroy the rainforest is inevitable, just as in the case of fishermen that are destroying fish stocks. Either they reduce their activities now and suffer, or they will stop entirely in 10 or 20 years when they have destroyed it all; that way, more of them will suffer, and worse, after having destroyed something irreplaceable. I am in favor of making them stop now, even by force.
The Afghan government claims to have arrested some of the Taliban who threw acid on girls on their way to school.
I hope it is true, but it seems suspiciously successful for a government so weak. I hope they did not arrest whoever they could get and torture them into confession.
Obama's message of "change" is making some undemocratic regimes tremble.
It would be ironic if that message were more show than substance in the US, and has real effects elsewhere.
When universities stand up to the RIAA, they can block the record companies' harassment suits.
Students should organize to demand that their universities not keep records that could make it possible to connect an IP address with anyone in particular.
The UK Labour Party once again dares to talk of taxing the rich, but its actual measures are not yet focused on helping the poor.
If people support Labour for this, they will also endorse its policy of total surveillance, imprisonment on suspicion, punishment for non-crimes, and so on.
Police in Australia have systematically infiltrated political
opposition groups, inserting provocateurs to
try to lead them into violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Iraq's defense minister is threatening "martial law" if the parliament does not accept keeping the Bush forces in Iraq.
One in October, a US congressman said that the Bushmen threatened him with martial law in the US if he did not vote for the bank bailout. In the US, that is a real threat. By contrast, if martial law were declared in Iraq, it would hardly be any different from the situation now.
Reports that Sarah Palin was not sure where Africa was were not a hoax, even though a hoaxer claimed to have made them up.
New Report: CIA Lied About Missionary Plane Shot Down Over Peru.
Obama is talking about
eliminating daylight savings time to reduce energy use.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
It might not be a big saving, but it could set an example.
When an Australian
policeman killed aboriginal prisoner Mulrinji Doomadgee in jail,
the police tried to deny responsibility. So the
local people burned down the courthouse, police station, and the
policemen's homes. These crimes were punished, but the killing was
not.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Al Sadr's people held a large protest in Baghdad against the proposed Bush occupation treaty.
This treaty does at least make a step forward, in that it subjects Bush forces mercenaries to Iraqi law. I wonder what kind of justice female contractors that get raped by male contractors will get under Iraqi law.
Atrazine in fertilizer boosts the population of snails
and parasitic worms they harbor,
and the worms can wipe out frogs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
When plastic trash in the ocean breaks up into small bits, lots of marine organisms can eat them and get toxic chemicals from them.
The Bush forces generals say that withdrawing the Bush from Iraq is impossible because it would take too much time to pull out all the expensive equipment they have put in place.
Obama's appointments for foreign policy are Clinton's people, active supporters of sweatshop treaties.
Biden as a senator actively suppressed opposition to the invasion of Iraq. As VP he may not be in a position to do much harm. But Hillary Clinton as senator turned off her bullshit detector. As a cabinet secretary she can do a lot of harm.
If Janet Napolitano becomes Secretary of "Homeland Security", she might kill the REAL ID plan. Or she might give it federal funds and wipe out that part of the opposition which is based on costs rather than freedom.
A new "Al Qa'ida" tape tells Obama, in rather unfriendly terms, to make peace.
Some of what was said in this tape is true. It may be too late for more troops in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban. And bowing to the Israeli Hawks Lobby is not conducive to rational hope of peace between Israel and Palestine. We don't need Al Qa'ida to tell us this, however, and neither does any US president.
So what could anyone from Al Qa'ida hope to gain my aiming warnings or threats at Obama? He's most unlikely to take their advice.
I wonder if this is meant to pressure Obama to follow Bush policies. Previous "Al Qa'ida" tapes appeared to be designed to boost Bush politically. Now that they can't boost Bush, they may seek to pressure Obama to follow Bush's policies. These policies were great for Al Qa'ida recruiting. If Obama were to do something sensible, millions of Muslims might stop being angry at the US, and where would that leave Al Qa'ida?
This tape will enable neocons to claim that wiser US policies would be "giving in to Al Qa'ida."
It's also possible that "Al Qa'ida" tapes are fakes made by neocons. Since the neocons and Al Qa'ida want the same US policies, either group might have chosen to make such a tape.
Even within the "music industry" some businessmen are calling for
the end of the War on Sharing, and say that
voluntary payments support musicians better.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
President Uribe (Horrible) of Colombia has been
forced to admit that
soldiers have been killing innocent people to collect bounties on dead
"terrorists". However, he has not placed charges against anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
(That article was published this month.)
A former UK Law Lord says that the UK and the US acted as "vigilantes" by invading Iraq.
One might wish he had not waited so long to say this.
The US-backed Ethiopian intervention in Somalia is responsible for the resurgence of piracy. The Union of Islamic Courts suppressed piracy, but the US-supported "Interim government" has no popular support and little power.
If phone company employees were not punished for checking who Obama called, can you trust them not to check (and tell) who you call?
A US judge ordered the release of several Guantanamo prisoners on grounds of Habeas corpus: the government failed to show any grounds to charge them with anything.
If someone forwards you the viral email claiming celebrities that condemn Bush are anti-American cowards, here's a good response.
TSA "behavior detection" selects innocent people more than 99 percent of the time, and psychologists say it is has no psychological basis.
The #1 story on Project Censored's list is that the Bush invasion of Iraq killed over a million Iraqis.
The UK plans to prosecute clients of prostitutes for rape if the prostitute is not working voluntarily, but has no intention to help them find out whether a prostitute is working voluntarily.
This law follows a common pattern of legal dishonesty: taking a term which we apply to a heinous act, and arbitrarily declaring that it applies to something else entirely. How many prostitutes did client X rape, if you call being a prostitute's client "rape"? None, because calling it a rape doesn't make it one. This law would be a lie, and the minister who proposed it is a liar.
The law is also designed to ensure that no prospective client of a prostitute can tell whether he would be committing a "rape" or not. Laws which do not allow a person to tell what is or is not a crime are no better than the caprices of an autocrat. The legislators that vote for them, and the prosecutors that try to enforce them, are the one who ought to be imprisoned.
It's obvious that aim of this law is to terrify all men that deal with any prostitutes. But rather than stating the intention to do so, it pretends to be doing something else. That too is dishonest.
If the UK government wants to prosecute dealing with trafficked prostitutes in a way that is just, it must give men a way to tell who is not trafficked. Perhaps voluntary prostitutes could get identification that the clients could ask to see, so they can reliably avoid committing the crime.
Rumor has it that Obama will
support
the Saudi plan for peace between Israel and all Arabs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
On the other hand, his appointment of Rahm Emmanual as chief of staff suggested that Obama is going to bow to the powerful Israeli Hawks' Lobby.
I hope the former will be true and the latter false.
In a man-bites-dog case, the British Bush forces arrested some Iraqi soldiers for murdering British soldiers who were their prisoners. Now the question is whether the Iraqi government would give them a fair trial, or torture them and kill them.
The UK is auctioning off some permissions to keep emitting CO2, rather than just giving away permissions. Making those companies pay is a good thing, but the money should be used to fund energy savings.
The job to be done to end global warming is so big that a few good steps are not enough.
Many food companies are shrinking containers or wasting space in them, to disguise price increases.
The European Union has addressed this problem with a system of standard product weights. I don't know how well the solution works.
Israel is increasing its attacks against Palestinians,
arresting
30 people in the West Bank
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
and destroying
crops in Gaza
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
and arresting
fishermen from Gaza so close on shore that they can't catch much fish.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israel arrested
several Palestinian children who got in the way of
plans to demolish almost 100 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem to build
gardens.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israel has also
ordered
the eviction of settler squatters in a house
in Hebron. But the settler movement is threatening to fight back a
lot more than those Palestinian kids do.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Many local governments in the UK use anti-terror laws to watch people putting rubbish out on the wrong day.
Prof. Nesson will
challenge
the constitutionality of the record companies' lawsuits
against people who share music.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight.
The Iraqi cabinet agreed to Bush's plan for keeping the Bush forces in Iraq for another few years, and without clearly solving dangers such as immunity and attacking other countries.
Bombings in Baghdad are increasing, and many Iraqis think the Bush forces are responsible.
Freedom of communication on the net is threatened in many ways at once.
None of the policemen who attacked sleeping protestors in Genoa has ever been identified. And none of the top policemen who ordered the attack will be punished.
Berlusconi adopted this 5-year law so he could escape prosecution for corruption.
Although California voted to prohibit same-sex marriage, Connecticut
voters rejected a similar measure, and
same-sex
marriage has now begun there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
the pledge to overturn California's proposition 8 and reinstate same-sex marriage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Although this applies specifically to California, they have asked non-Californians to sign too.
The Bush regime is going beyond the authorized bailout, making illegal handouts to business. Is Obama serious about changing course or will he let the stock market dictate one more plunder of the treasury?
US citizens: phone your senators and say they should not let Lieberman continue as the chair of the Committee on "Homeland Security". Lieberman persistently supports the war in Iraq and has bent over backwards to leave us unprotected from abuses of government spy power.
It's a mistake to put issues of civil liberties in charge of a committee whose remit is described in terms of "security."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641, and 888-355-3588
A court ruled against a Bush plan to
illegally
hide government e-mails from the national archives.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
A paper mill that has polluted Lake Baikal with mutagenic dioxin has closed after decades of pressure from environmentalists.
A spoof edition of the New York Times announced peace in Iraq and the correction of many other social problems.
The Yes Men have done other wonderful pranks.
Israel has blocked food delivery into Gaza. The cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza lasted 5 months until Israel broke it. The threat of starvation is Israel's retaliation for the Palestinian retaliation.
The idea that Palestinians could use a tunnel to capture Israeli soldiers seems rather far fetched, especially if Israeli soldiers know where the tunnel is located and stay away from it.
A tunnel might serve such captors to hide in or flee through, but there are lots of other places to do those things. For the actual capture they would surely use arms. To break the cease fire because of a tunnel is as absurd as breaking it because some Palestinians have arms.
But even during the cease fire Israel did not end the siege, which kills helpless civilians in Gaza by denying them medical care.
I wonder if the real reason why Israel broke the cease fire was to
distract attention from an increasing focus on Israel's taking of
Palestinian land.
UK is taking a strict stand against
The
passing off exports from Israeli settlements
as coming from Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The annexation wall is supposedly meant to protect Israelis from Palestinians,
but when it protects Palestinians from violent Israeli settlers,
they
knock it down.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
It's a step forward that the Israeli government has started to take down the "illegal outposts" instead of build them up. But all the settlements are really illegal. For the sake of peace, they have to be eliminated.
Diyala province in Iraq is the scene for many female suicide bombers.
Attacking pro-US soldiers is legitimate for a resistance movement, but these tactics are despicable. The guilt for this falls both on the fanatics that organize the suicide bombings and on the fanatics that organized the conquest of Iraq, since the earlier crime paved the way for the later one.
The Bush bank bailout is a
feeding
trough just like the "reconstruction" of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Police in London are censoring music performances and make false/confusing statements when asked about it.
Previously Nkunda's troops were murdering civilians for no reason. Now Congo government troops are accused of raping civilians.
The UK and Russia have taken effective measures against piracy.
The election of an African-American as president may help the US move towards racial equality,
but
it has a long way to go.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israel confiscated the al Kurd family's home in East Jerusalem because
it was owned by Jews before 1948. However,
Israel
will not let the family reclaim the house that it owned in West Jerusalem before 1948.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The occupation of Palestine by Israel is "the bone in America's
throat". As long as it is stuck there, the US
will continue
provoking conflict and putting its citizens and others in danger.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Urgent Note - U.S. citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Henry Waxman for chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The other choice, Dingell, is in the pocket of the energy companies and his wife is an executive at GM.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-8181-6641, and 888-355-3588
37% of Americans still believe Bush's discredited lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Bush continued to spread this lie throughout his term of office.
Why is there more interest in preventing heart attacks through expensive drugs than through efficient programs to reduce tobacco use?
These two methods apply to different groups of people, so non-smokers may need these drugs. Notwithstanding that, the comparison is still pertinent.
Australian internet censorship plans are running into powerful opposition from citizenry that know perfectly well what the internet does (and what it doesn't do).
Hannah Jones went to court to stop a hospital from taking her by force for a heart transplant.
I feel so sorry for her. I suppose she would want a treatment for her heart problem, if the treatment weren't so unbearable.
One thing police all over the world have in common is that they attack people who witness their crimes. China has sentenced some auxiliary policemen to a few years in prison for killing a man who filmed them attacking citizens.
The victim's family protests that this sentence is unusually light for a killing.
The police in St Paul did not kill Amy Goodman, they just arrested her for making a video of their attacks on protestors at the RNC.
Burmese protestors have been sentenced to 65 years in prison for crimes such as "making speeches" and "participating in protests".
The Burmese government is honest about what it is doing. In the US, protest leaders are charged with planning "terrorism" and face the possibility of many years in prison for this.
In Spain, meanwhile, "praising terrorism" is a crime.
I do not support the cause of Basque independence — rather, I think all of Spain should be independent of a government that punishes people for expressing an opinion.
Ralph Nader's open letter to Obama (published November 3) summarizes some of the things that led me to endorse and vote for Nader.
Obama is already planning to reverse some harmful Bush policies such as the ban on funding stem cell research. Bush is hurrying to make some acts of sabotage irreversible.
However, Obama's economic advisors include those responsible for the economic problems of the past.
Israel has excited an old Palestinian couple from their home of 52 years.
Israel is trying to have it both ways: taking back land seized from Jews in 1948 but refusing to return land seized from Arabs in 1948; enforcing eviction orders against Arabs but not against Jews.
1/4 of the shark species in the Atlantic are in danger of extinction due to overfishing.
Bill Ayers on how the 60s should inspire us today.
The 60s are relevant today for many reasons, including that the Vietnam war, like the conquest of Iraq, was justified by lies. The U.S. has admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was fabricated.
"Recycled" computer components are illegally sent to China for poor people to pick apart the toxic components.
This is what globalization of commerce really means.
Witnesses say that the police who shot De Menezies gave no warning, and did not say they were police. They seemed confused and panicky
Obama's choice of Chief of Staff is a strong support of sweatshop treaties and of the Israel right wing.
This confirms my expectation that Obama will prove to be a small change.
Mr. President, We Too Have A Dream:
an
open letter to Obama about peace in the Middle East.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Republicans made a big effort to steal the election by stopping 6 million people from voting. They may have succeeded in stealing the Georgia senate election.
The rebel Congo army is apparently killing unarmed civilians summarily in towns it has conquered.
This article refers to the conflict as an ethnic one, but that could be ignoring the real issue: control of the valuable trade in minerals.
Many Iraqis think
they
were better off under Saddam.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bush continues missile attacks in Pakistan that kill civilians.
A court released Malaysian dissident Raja Petra from imprisonment without trial for his writings, but he still faces criminal charges for "sedition" after accusing a minister of crimes.
Bush's parting attack on the US is targeting civil liberties as well as environmental protection. Here are the details.
Republicans are now condemning Sarah Palin's ignorance and cupidity.
But who is a Republican to talk? Ignorance (real or pretended) and cupidity are the maxims of the Republican party.
I have reported several times on fears that Bush would start a war with Iran to manipulate the election. I have to acknowledge that he has not done so. With luck he won't start a war before he leaves office.
Massachusetts voted
to eliminate criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Hooray!
Bush is planning a parting attack on the U.S. by eliminating regulations designed to protect consumers and the environment.
The war in the Congo has killed over 5 million people. Gangs that sell minerals to major western companies are fighting over the supplies.
Tony Lagouranis was
taught by the US Army to torture,
but he had the strength to decide to refuse.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The UK has begun supporting British residents imprisoned in Guantanamo, and calling on the US to release them.
Iraqi refugees are being offered $850 to return to Iraq, but only a few return, because others are still fleeing.
The way to teach children to protect their privacy is for their parents to start resisting government and private electronic snooping and record-keeping.
Naomi Klein: the bank bailout will encourage risky bank practices that will get the bankers bailouts over and over. It should be canceled.
Trees produce chemicals that stimulate cloud formation, which reduces the heat Earth receives from the Sun.
What this implies for global warming is not clear, because global warming threatens to destroy many forests (in Canada, Indonesia, Brazil, for instance), and that could lead to a positive feedback effect.
Al Maliki: don't call it a "security pact", rather an agreement for withdrawal of the Bush forces.
I have often called the Iraqi government a puppet; I am impressed that it is showing such ability to stand up to Bush's pressure.
Medical examinations by Physicians for Human Rights confirm the Bush regime has tortured prisoners and committed war crimes.
Will Obama prosecute these crimes? So far he has not suggested that he will.
The Taliban are
taking
over Afghanistan and closing in on Kabul.
At the same time, they are splitting into uncontrollable factions,
and some of them are moderating and becoming simply nationalist.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The article suggests the possibility of making peace with them. I hope it is possible.
Israel bulldozed the homes of 100 Palestinians in East Jerusalem
before the court got around to ordering it. The victims say
that they have lived on that land for generations and will not leave.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
However, Israel has made a small beginning of
demolishing the "settlement outposts" which are non-government
approved expansions of the Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
For many years the Israeli government has criticized them but has done little to stop them.
However, the radical settlers
take
reprisals on Palestinians
when they are thwarted.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Evidence from Saudi Arabia confirms that
hardly
any of the prisoners in Guantanamo were ever terrorists to begin with.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is the natural result of imprisonment without trial: innocent victims in prison.
Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld resigned as a US Army prosecutor in
Guantanamo, then
testified
for the defense about how he had been
ordered to conceal vital information from the defense.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Vandevald deserves a medal for this heroism, but what he got was the
opposite. Although Vandeveld had received great praise for his work
previously, the Bush regime
tried
to smear him for resigning —
including sending him for psychiatric evaluation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
Meanwhile, the Bush regime is trying strange legal maneuvers to cancel and restart the trial of Binyam Mohommed, so as to block Vandeveld from testifying a second time about the violation of his rights.
There is no room for an honest person in the parts of the US government that Bush has corrupted.
40% of Iraqis drink water that isn't safe, and it is not getting better.
A court rejected B'liar's rigged "consultation" on building nuclear power plants, so Clown held another "consultation". Now it has been exposed how the second one was rigged, but the Clown regime says that doesn't matter.
Greenpeace protestors are holding a sleep-in protest on the site of a planned coal power plant in the UK.
All US government agencies have been told to work on a spin campaign to present Bush's dishonest and destructive policies as success.
Dalits were
attacked by upper-caste Hindus for entering temples,
which is not allowed for them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
James Chasse died of massive injuries shortly after his arrest in Portland Oregon. The police are clearly guilty, but which ones and how?
The ACLU has intervened on behalf of protestors, potential protestors, and journalists arrested in St Paul.
However, courts cannot plausibly do anything that would undo the effect of these crimes or make the police regret them. For instance, it does little good to require the police to return the handouts they confiscated, now that the chance to hand them out has passed. Our streets and our country will never be safe while these gangsters are on the loose.
Amnesty International has criticized the arrests too.
Uribe has admitted that the Colombian army kills innocent civilians in order to present their corpses as "dead guerrilleros" to collect a bounty.
Margo MacDonald, member of the Scottish Parliament, proposes the legalization of assisted suicide in Scotland.
Freedom to communicate electronically is under attack in the US as elsewhere. Here's an explanation of many threats.
A
report on the statistics of Marijuana arrests in Massachusetts
shows their human and monetary cost. Vote yes on prop 2!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-14 because the
old
link was broken.]
The UK will investigate whether MI5 and CIA officers tortured Binyam Mohamed.
Indonesia has adopted a law that gives Muslim fanatics license to physically attack anything or anyone they consider to be sexually suggestive.
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