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Seductive bad advice for environmentalists: "work more with business".
A study that I linked to from here previously reported that environmental organizations have achieved more by activism than by trying to work as insiders. The advice to work more as insiders will mean achieving less.
I suspect two reasons why more Americans oppose environmentalism now than before. Both are consequences of right-wing gains in other areas of politics. One is that many Americans' views are shaped by the corporate media, which is more solidly controlled and more right-wing now than in the 70s. The other is Americans in general are poorer.
Concern for the environment grew as many Americans became comfortable enough that they were not worried about immediate survival. As the right-wing makes life harder in the US, more Americans fall back to the level where they can't afford to care--about the environment, or about anything.
There is no essential reason for there to be a trade-off between more jobs and substantially more pollution. All sorts of work can be done in cleaner ways or dirtier ways. When businesses face strong democratic governments, as they did in the US in the 70s, they have to do the work the clean way. But when businesses are stronger than the governments, which is true todaya as a result of "free trade" treaties, they can force countries to compete to permit the highest pollution levels. That's why more jobs means more pollution.
Bush placated Europe by calling for a contiguous Palestine, but he's not really stopping Sharon from carving it up.
UK plans for "internment at home" are running into trouble and are being scaled back--but the essence, which is to deny the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty, remains.
Bush gave Putin a good lecture about what democracy means. Now if only he would follow his own advice.
How credit card companies play tricks to gouge the public.
They can do this because the president and Congress represent the banks more than they represent the public.
Dubya's uncle's company is profiting from the war, often through no-bid contracts.
The Colombian Army arrested and then murdered peace activists and their families.
(I read in another announcement that one of the arrested people escaped, which is how it is known that the others were arrested by the army just before they were killed.)
The French oil company TOTAL is a big financial backer of the Burmese regime--and its practices of slave labor.
Chavez is moving forward with the breakup of large land holdings so as to give land to the peasants.
The US encouraged this policy in the 1960s, but Venezuela did not implemented it in a permanent way. Now Chavez is completing what Kennedy started.
Human activities that damage the environment have the ironic indirect effect of creating new diseases for humans.
Even the Bush-appointed head of the CIA now
admits that the occupation of Iraq strengthens Islamic terrorist groups.
I disagree with one point in that article: business interests do not
deserve any clout, not in a democracy. If a business executive has
more influence than you or I, that means democracy has been subverted
to some extent.
The Athenian democracy was carefully designed to resist this danger.
The influence of corporate executives on elections
also protects them from prosecution for their crimes.
Here are examples.
Venezuelan president Chavez accused Bush of plotting to assassinate
him. It would not surprise me, since the US has already tried several
ways to remove him from office.
The story is full of cheap shots against Chavez. For instance, Chavez
objected when Colombia kidnaped a FARC leader from Venezuela; wouldn't
you object if foreigners kidnaped someone in your country and carried
him off? He said Colombia should have applied for that man's
extradition, and presented evidence in court. Isn't that the right
way to handle accusations of criminal activity?
The article trivializes both issues by calling them "noisy diplomatic
spats". The article also says it's the second such on two months, as
if to show that Chavez is foolishly quarrelsome. However, it's the US
that decides how many disputes to create with Venezuena. Attack
someone, then blame him for responding--it's standard tactics for
bullies that expect to control the spin of what they do.
Bush is using the same tactics to put across lies about
social security that he used to put across lies about Iraq.
Ocean temperature data show conclusively that global warming
is caused by mad-made greenhouse gases.
Federal prisoners in Brooklyn
were tortured by "a significant
percentage of those who had regular contact with the detainees."
John Negroponte, Bush's new Director of Intelligence, has a history of
supporting campaigns of murder--by lying.
Bush's men at the CIA are trying to break it to total obedience
to support Bush's political agenda. Several people have quit.
If you think of this in terms of obtaining intelligence for the sake
of some sort of national interest, the departure of those people would
be a problem. But Bush doesn't care--he just wants obedience.
Bush and Saudi Arabia are suspected of trying to muzzle Al Jazeera.
The inhabitants of Kufr Kadum have started a nonviolent protest
campaign against the Israeli settlement that blocks the only road into
their village.
More cases of murder by British Bush forces troops are coming to light.
The cases that are documented enough to be investigated are surely but
a fraction of all the cases. And the Americans in the invading forces
have surely murdered far more.
Bush pretends to be trying to reduce US greenhouse gas
emissions, but it is phony.
Bush Tort Reform:
Executive Clemency For Executive Killers
There has been substantial climatic change in
deep ocean water
in the past 10 years. The reason is not known.
Human Rights Watch reports that Russia is carrying out a campaign of
repression in Chechnya, including torture and murder.
Too bad the US government is no longer in a position to criticize
this.
The Human Rights Watch report is said to be a part of the large
file found at this address.
The king of Nepal is arresting human rights workers as
well as politicians.
A plan to drill for oil near Sakhalin
could wipe out an
endangered species of whales.
Virginia House Panel Cites
'Liberty' In Yanking Red-Light Cameras
Beware of the Dog! (Uri Avnery)
The 35-hour work week
is under attack in France. This is part of the global business strategy to make each country's
workers work more hours to compete with the rest of the world.
The result of this pressure is, workers everywhere lose, and only the
bosses gain.
The CIA is
complaining about being left in charge of people imprisoned for life
without trial.
Somehow I can't feel very sorry for them, because the injustice of
keeping prisoners for life without trial eclipses the practical
consequences for the warders. Nobody gets into the CIA against his
will, and if you don't like being in the CIA, you can get out.
This article's focus on the embarrassment of the warders reflects a
prior decision to downplay the injustice of what they are doing. It
reminds me of the movie Pulp Fiction, specifically of the discussion
between murderous thugs about the ethics of foot massages.
An American nun who defended Brazilian farmers from illegal loggers
has been murdered, highlighting Lula's failure to stop illegal logging.
An Italian journalist, held hostage in Iraq,
pleads for removal of Italian troops.
It would be cowardly and absurd to withdraw troops from a justified
and necessary war merely to save a few hostages. On the other hand, a
few hostages don't excuse continued participation in an unjust war.
Bush ordered scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service to
misrepresent scientific data--not just once, but many times. The goal
was to avoid protecting endangered species.
The Soviet Union was famous for imposing a distorted idea of science:
Lysenko's theory of evolution, which said that striving to change
oneself leads to changes in one's offspring. This theory, adopted in
the face of the facts because it fit Communist ideology, was
devastating for biology in the Soviet Union.
Capitalists also distort science and suppress facts, but they do it to
prevent interference with their business plan. We have seen this in
regard to global warming, in regard to endangered species, in regard
to genetically modified crops, and in regard to the danger of
medicines, tobacco, and other products. This means that much of the
criticism of Soviet-style Commmunism applies to Capitalism as well.
Bush is trying
to deny tortured US pilots compensation they are due from Iraq.
Bush doesn't think torture is a bad thing, and now that the Iraqi
government is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bush and his cronies, they
doesn't want any of their money going to unimportant US Air Force
pilots.
The king of Nepal
continues arresting political leaders, human rights workers, and
journalists. Newspapers and radio are heavily censored.
UN food aid in Central America contains lots of genetically modified
plants, including some that isn't approved
for human consumption.
A Global Supremacy Pushing in Variant Forms.
US troops in Afghanistan
practiced torture.
We know that the impetus for torture came from the White House, so I
am not surprised that it was practiced in many places (and through
various organizations and intermediaries).
More evidence is emerging that intelligence agencies were pressured to
falsify information to support Bush/Bliar claims about Iraqi weapons.
After a prominent Lebanese politician was assassinated,
Bush is
blaming Syria. There is no evidence that Syria
was responsible, but that never stopped Bush.
The Syrian occupation of Lebanon was initially a way of ending the
civil war and terrorism. But Lebanon is pretty stable now, and unless
this assassination leads to a general deterioration, I think Syria
should end its occupation of Lebanon. However, we shouldn't let this
side issue distract us from the much crueler occupations of Iraq and
Palestine.
Extreme and unreasonable interpretation of copyright law is
strangling
the making of documentaries--especially about recent history and
culture. The problem with Eyes on the Prize is just one example.
The West Antartic Ice Sheet has started flowing
into the sea. If it breaks up, which could happen in a few years or a
couple of decades, sea level will rise by 16 feet.
Iraqi Kurds take a stand in favor of democracy and
pluralism, while the Shi'ites call for Islamic law and are asking
whether
the Bush vote counters cheated them.
The AP reported on videotapes of assaults
on prisoners by Guantamo's riot squad. They show things such as
punching prisoners, kneeing one in the head, making them strip and taking
them to a place where (former prisoners report) they are kept naked for
days, and spraying them with pepper spray repeatedly while they are locked
in their cells.
Storing CO2 underground is proposed
as a way to reduce global warming.
I have nothing against this solution in principle, but I have to wonder:
how far could it really be scaled up, and how much energy does it need?
Young Americans show
decreased support for freedom of speech. This means the future of
freedom in the US is in permanent danger.
Microsoft blackmailed the Danish government into supporting
software patents by threatening to move
recently-acquired subsidiary out of Denmark.
The Danish government should protect itself from blackmail by forcing
Microsoft to sell off this company. And it should adopt much tighter
limits on acquisition of any local company by a multinational.
We
can't be sure who Iraqis really voted for, but the announced
outcome gives Shi'ites a near-majority, since the Sunnis considered
the election tainted. Other news stories said that the election
procedures result in an actual majority of seats for the Shi'ites.
Either way, that's not enough to let them unilaterally draw up the
constitution.
Real democracy in Iraq would mean that Iraqis can decide who gets
their oil, whether they want to privatize their economy, whether they
want seed patents, and whether they want the Bush forces there. I
don't think Bush will offer them real democracy. The question is
whether they will get distracted by other issues and other
disagreements, and give Bush what he wants.
Neo-nazis are
gaining strength in Germany.
Germans have plenty of reason to be angry--megacorporations and their
power, for instance--but when people are angry it is easy to distract
them with scapegoats.
Police attacked a
concert in a French trade union headquarters, and
arrested a woman, who they
proceeded to beat up in their van.
Ahmed Ali is a prisoner in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia says the US
asked for him to be imprisoned. The US government claims to have
nothing to do with the matter, but meanwhile, it is asking a judge to
secretly dismiss Ali's lawsuit. This, in effect, is a confession
of lying.
Whatever danger Ahmed Ali might perhaps be, it is nothing compared
to the danger of a government that has no respect for truth.
Bush
suppressed parts of the official 9/11 investigation report that
showed the FAA was aware of the danger of terrorist hijackings.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, because Bush prevented the
investigation from even addressing many of the issues.
Sharon and Abu Mazen have declared a truce. It is a good thing if the
violence ends, but if the Israeli land grab continues, it can't last.
Three members of the Brooklyn Copwatch program were arrested for
filming the police beating someone up.
Our streets will never be safe as long as the police attack with impunity.
A former Guantanamo prisoner now says the UK government had him sent
there to be tortured because
he refused to act as a spy.
The US and UK governments are imitating the behavior of the villains
of spy novels.
The UN now has a
"zero-tolerance" policy for sex between
peacekeeping forces in the Congo and the inhabitants of the country.
Something has to be done to prevent rape and the spreading of diseases,
but it is absurd to think soldiers will go entirely without sex.
This policy could just force them further underground, which might
even backfire.
Megacillin:
A Parable for Our Times.
Neo-nazis in the US are
making themselves more visible.
I wonder how much the Bush regime's climate of fear, xenophobia, and
contempt for human rights is contributing to their support.
The Bush forces are publishing misleading information to conceal
their failure to
train an Iraqi puppet army and police.
NATO security forces
extend to more of Afghanistan.
The Bliar regime is
participating closely in US torture-by-proxy.
News about Iraq goes through
filters.
When someone says in public that the Bush forces intentionally kill
journalists, then resigns his job and denies he said it, we have to
decide which statement to believe. The only explanation that seems
plausible to me is: he said it, he meant it, and then was threatened
with some sort of punishment if he didn't lie to deny it.
Young Americans show decreased support for freedom of speech. This
means the future of freedom in the US is in permanent danger.
The AP reported on videotapes of assaults on prisoners by Guantamo's
riot squad. They show things such as punching prisoners, kneeing one
in the head, making them strip and taking them to a place where
(former prisoners report) they are kept naked for days, and spraying them
with pepper spray repeatedly while they are locked in their cells.
Storing CO2 underground is
proposed as a way to reduce global warming.
I have nothing against this solution in principle, but I have to wonder:
how far could it really be scaled up, and how much energy does it need?
News about Iraq goes through filters
When someone says in public that the Bush forces intentionally kill
journalists, then resigns his job and denies he said it, we have to
decide which statement to believe. The only explanation that seems
plausible to me is: he said it, he meant it, and then was threatened
with some sort of punishment if he didn't lie to deny it.
The Bush forces are publishing misleading information to conceal
their failure to train an Iraqi puppet army and police.
NATO security forces extend to more of Afghanistan.
The Bliar regime is participating closely in US
torture-by-proxy.
Neo-nazis in the US are
making themselves more visible.
I wonder how much the Bush regime's climate of fear, xenophobia, and
contempt for human rights is contributing to their support.
Megacillin:
A Parable for Our Times
The UN now has a "zero-tolerance" policy for sex between
peacekeeping forces in the Congo and the inhabitants of the country.
Something has to be done to prevent rape and the spreading of diseases,
but it is absurd to think soldiers will go entirely without sex.
This policy could just force them further underground, which might
even backfire.
A former Guantanamo prisoner now says the UK government had him sent
there to be tortured because he
refused to act as a spy.
The US and UK governments are imitating the behavior of the villains
of spy novels.
Three members of the Brooklyn Copwatch program were
arrested for
filming the police beating someone up.
Our streets will never be safe as long as the police attack with impunity.
Sharon and Abu Mazen have declared a truce. It is a good thing if the
violence ends, but if the Israeli land grab continues, it can't last.
Bush suppressed parts of the official 9/11 investigation report that
showed the FAA was aware of the danger of terrorist hijackings.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, because Bush prevented the
investigation from even addressing many of the issues.
Ahmed Ali is a prisoner in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia says the US
asked for him to be imprisoned. The US government claims to have
nothing to do with the matter, but meanwhile, it is asking a judge to
secretly dismiss Ali's lawsuit. This, in effect, is a confession
of lying.
Whatever danger Ahmed Ali might perhaps be, it is nothing compared
to the danger of a government that has no respect for truth.
Police
attacked a concert in a French trade union headquarters, and
arrested a woman, who they proceeded to
beat up in their van.
We can't be sure who Iraqis really voted for, but the announced
outcome gives Shi'ites a near-majority, since the Sunnis considered
the election tainted. Other news stories said that the election
procedures result in an actual majority of seats for the Shi'ites.
Either way, that's not enough to let them unilaterally draw up the
constitution.
Real democracy in Iraq would mean that Iraqis can decide who gets
their oil, whether they want to privatize their economy, whether they
want seed patents, and whether they want the Bush forces there. I
don't think Bush will offer them real democracy. The question is
whether they will get distracted by other issues and other
disagreements, and give Bush what he wants.
Neo-nazis are gaining strength in Germany.
Germans have plenty of reason to be angry--megacorporations and their
power, for instance--but when people are angry it is easy to distract
them with scapegoats.
Microsoft blackmailed the Danish government into supporting
software patents by threatening to move recently-acquired
subsidiary out of Denmark.
The Danish government should protect itself from blackmail by forcing
Microsoft to sell off this company. And it should adopt much tighter
limits on acquisition of any local company by a multinational.
Private companies are helping the US government collect personal
information,
beyond what it is legally entitled to access.
You don't have to give these companies as much personal information as
most Americans do. You don't have to use a cell phone; you don't have
to use credit cards instead of cash; you don't have to get store
discount cards; you don't have to use automatic toll collection
systems. I avoid all of these things almost completely, and I do so
specifically to resist the surveillance society.
Blair attempted to reimprison one of the imprisoned terrorist suspects
using secret evidence. This was blocked by a judge, but Blair can try
again at any time, and the evidence could be as phony as the evidence
for nuclear weapons in Iraq.
The University of Colorado is preparing to fire Professor Ward
Churchill because of his views. He said that cruel and unjust US
policies in the Arab world created the motivations for the 9/11
attacks.
Here's what Ward Churchill has to say:
A number of sites present bizarre theories about the 9/11 attacks,
sometimes based on fake evidence. It is possible that this is
partly sponsored by Bush.
Bush canceled a plan to add 10,000 border patrol agents.
This is
further demonstration that Bush has no real interest in protecting the
US from foreign terrorists, except as an excuse for measures that
serve other goals.
There's one way that this decision could actually be the right one.
If Bush knows that he has exaggerated the threat of foreign terrorists
all along--because he knows that 9/11 needed inside help--then perhaps
he knows there is no real need for more border security.
According to a court in the US, a retarded man on death row, who got
his execution blocked because he is retarded, has so improved his
brain by working on his defense that it is now ok to execute him.
Parents are objecting to a California school that uses RFIDs to track
their kids.
It is good to see people fighting back against the surveillance
society. I refuse to carry the MIT ID card that has an RFID--I don't
have one.
A Blair minister complains that the public, after seeing they were
lied to about Iraq's weapons, is now skeptical of what he says about
supposed possible terrorists.
The danger of terrorism is not zero; but governments and the media
often exaggerate it, and people tend to overreact to it. A certain
amount of skepticism will help the public estimate the danger more
realistically. Then they can compare it more accurately with the
other real danger that governments don't try to exaggerate: the danger
of too much government power.
CO2 is not just warming the Earth,
it is making the ocean acid, which
is already wipimg out many species of marine life. Including the fish
that people eat.
The flowers you buy in the US are
grown mostly in Colombia and
Ecuador, and with the anti-union policies of those governments,
the workers are treated terribly.
UK plans to impose permanent punishment (such as house arrest)
without trial
are running into broad opposition.
It looks like Shi'ites and Kurds won the Iraqi election.
No surprise there. But if they don't use this to tell
Bush to stop oppression of their country, they will
have made a deal with the devil.
One example of what they are surrendering to is US-style patents on
seeds.
Democracy is alive in Brazil in a way that shows what the US is missing.
There are reports that more Sunnis than expected tried to vote in
Iraq. Some were unable to vote because of shortages of polling places
and ballots--like Ohio all over again. I wonder if Bush was trying
to manipulate this election's outcome.
Any Iraqi who believed this election will be honest, or that it will
lead to democracy, has been gulled. As Kucinich pointed out, neither
we nor they will ever know who the votes were really cast for. And
the election's association with foreign conquerors will taint anyone
that takes office through it, unless he quickly disassociates himself
from Bush and tells Bush to get out.
A public campaign in France defies the laws against peer-to-peer
music sharing, demanding an end to prosecutions of those who share.
The UK's freedom of information act is a joke:
nearly all requests for information are refused,
often without real consideration.
Exxon-Mobil is funding a campaign of warming-denial, involving
lobbyists, and think tanks that will publish anything as a
"scientific" conclusion.
Professor Shahid Alam is the target of an organized
Fox News smear campaign:
Here's the essay that made him a target:
Here's his initial response to the death threats he received in the responses
to that essay.
These violent critics are not reading the essay very rationally. They
remind me Iranian mullahs who condemned Salmon Rushdie to death for
The Satanic Verses. They didn't read it very rationally either.
I don't fully agree with that essay either. It assumes that the 9/11
attacks were organized and carried out solely by a group of Muslim
terrorists--but there is plenty of reason to doubt that theory. It
finishes on a note of support for Islam, as if Professor Alam would be
glad to see various dictatorships overthrown, but even more glad if
Islam does the work. Just because Islam is now connected with the
opposition to empire, that doesn't make religion a good thing.
Religion deserves tolerance, but no more.
Thus, my support for Mr Alam's freedom to publish this essay is not
because I agree with him. It is because I believe in freedom of the
press. It is because I believe in what America is supposed to stand
for, even if Fox News does not.
The UN
convicted a Serbian general of war crimes because he
did not do enough to prevent the shelling of civilians in Dubrovnik.
If we imagine applying that standard to Bush, it is no wonder he is
scared of the International Criminal Court. After Humanity vs Bush,
Bush will spend his whole life in prison.
Russian officers--generals?--helped the attack on the Beslan
school.
There are reports of evidence of involvement of officials in
Moscow.
These generals and officials may have been bribed by Chechens--ten
years ago, Russians told me that there was a big Chechen mafia; it was
one of those things that "everybody knew". But it is also possible
that someone higher up in the Russian government arranged this attack.
With the little freedom of the press that Putin allows, it is hard to
place faith in any sort of news reports. In determining the
responsibility for a crime such as the attack on the Beslan school,
one can either believe the authorities, or ask who profited from it.
Neither one is a reliable basis to determine who was responsibie.
The European Union plans to require fingerprints and digital photos
for passports--and
store them in RFIDs. This means people could
read this information out of your passport while it is in your pocket.
The first part of this plan starts in 2006. If you live in the
European Union, get yourself a new passport before it starts.
Israel is talking about letting the Palestinian Authority take
oversecurity in some towns.
Maybe this is a real move towards peace. If so, I won't criticize it.
However, we have to watch what Sharon does, not what he says.
The king of Nepal has
formally abolished all human rights. It's a
Nepalling situation.
Cheney is smarter. When Bush attacks human rights, he pretends to be
their champion.
Interview with a former US "Economic Hit Man".
The State of Virginia has stood firm against red-light cameras.
As for the person who keeps talking about safety, surveillance is not
the only way to achieve that. Flyovers could do it too. They would
cost somewhat more, but not much compared with the state budget.
Freedom from Big Brother is worth the price.
"Free Trade" Leaves World Food Supply In Grip Of Global Giants.
Bush forces troops shot and killed protesting prisoners in Iraq
(who have been held without trial, of course). Other troops report that
the troops have sometimes shot prisoners in cages.
A non-violent protestor in Palestine
reports on how he was arrested,
then punched and clubbed with a rifle. Then he escaped.
New statistical studies provide further evidence for vote-counting
fraud in the US presidential election.
There is
more evidence that the US is planning to attack Iran.
I would be glad to see the theocracy in Iran replaced by a regime that
would respect human rights and democracy. However, when the plan
comes from the world's principal sponsor of state-supported terrorism,
the US government, it really stands for imposing US domination,
IMF-style privatization, and so on. The result, if it isn't permanent
war as in Iraq, would be subjugation of Iran to a new master--not freedom.
If Iraq keeps the Bush forces busy, they won't be able to invade
anyplace else.
An Israeli sniper shot at a school playground and killed a girl. There
was no shred of an excuse; it was simple
murder. This imperils the
tentative cease-fire.
One controversial Guantanamo interrogation technique uses fake
menstrual blood, which strict Muslim men superstitiously interpret as
making them "unclean".
This fits the
official definition of torture.
However, I think that keeping people shackled for long periods, or forcing them to stand in painful positions, is much worse.
And Bush shows no sign of renouncing those forms of torture
(which can cause lasting injury).
France has presnted new international tax proposals as a way to boost
aid and end poverty.
Blair plans to replace the system of prison-without-trial for
foreigners with a
system of house-arrest-without-trial that applies
to citizens too.
Blair defends this plan by saying that it would only apply "to a
handful of people". In other words, his assumption is that nobody has
rights, and the state can do anything to anyone, but you shouldn't
be concerned because it probably won't happen to you this year.
Women tortured in Iraq by the Bush forces--with rape and other
methods--
are suing in US court.
Once again, a US court has ruled that the prisoners in Guantanamo have
a right to contest their imprisonment.
Violence between Palestine and Israel has
reached stalemate.
A review of the effects and results of the Iraq war.
Bliar continues to support Bush as Bush
refuses to take action
on global warming. He continues to pretend that he will have some
influence on Bush this way, even though he has never got anything
on this before.
The last 4 Britons in Guantanamo are now free,
but suffering from the
effects of torture. The UK police decided not to charge them with
anything.
Freeing seven prisoners, after Bush delayed for years just to show how
tough he is, is the sum total of what Blair has been able to achieve
through years of "special relationship" with the US. But what about
the hundreds more torture victims, mostly also innocent, whose
governments will not defend their rights?
Is Bush using
hazing to assure he gets a yes-man to lead the Federal Reserve?
Dr Ambedkar's revision
of Buddhism eliminated the aspect that contradicts
science, and directed efforts outwards towards justice instead of
inward towards nonattachment.
One could say that practicioners of traditional Buddhism are trying to
make themselves, in a sense, untouchable. Ambedkar, who was born an
untouchable, rejected that aim.
Darfur will be a test for the future of the International Criminal
Court. Will the US be able to make it inoperative?
Torture: It's Not Only Illegal, It's Wrong
A soldier who was at Abu Ghraib and refused to condone torture was
harrassed by his superiors. Why did they do this? Was it because
they personally support torture, or were they supporting recognized
official policy?
Republican congressmen foiled effors to protect chemical plants
against terrorism, because they would have been
inconvenient for the companies.
This shows that their talk about security is not sincere. It's just
an excuse for doing what they really want--such as reducing human
rights, and transferring wealth to the rich. When security means
hassling people, or paying a lot to some corporations, then they are
for it. When security gets in businesses' way, then it is not
necessary.
Perhaps the Republicans have good reason to know there won't be more
terrorist attacks--if they know something about the 9/11 attacks that
we don't know.
Kucinich:
Iraq Elections Will Be A Farce.
Coronation in the
Garrison State.
A new computer model predicts
global warming will be twice as bad a previously thought.
In just a few decades, average temperatures could
rising 20 degrees fahrenheit, and sea levels could rise 20 feet. The
danger level of carbon dioxide has already been reached.
Mount Everest is losing height ice
due to global warming, and the region is changing at habitable
altitudes too.
Three
stages of colonization: of territory, of finance, and
of the human body.
I should point out that the "medicine costing one dollar in Tanzania"
example is not typical of what drug companies really do. Their prices
in poor countries are chosen to maximize the income from sales to the
wealthy in those countries. Of course, even if drug companies did
lose money to such smuggling, that would not justify stopping these
countries from making drugs for the people who need them.
The article would have been clearer if it had avoided the confusing
term "intellectal property". The issues concern patents, but
"intellectual property" includes various other laws that raise
different issues and are not relevant here. See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml.
US Democrats:
You can't win the game if you don't get in it
Monsanto has
sued almost 150 farms in the US over use of patented
seeds. Some of these farms did not intentionally plant the seed, but
the odds are against them anyway.
If your neighbor plants Monsanto seed, the pollen might get into your
field and get you sued. So make it clear you will sue him for
exposing you to the danger, and maybe he won't plant it.
For the full report:
23 prisoners in Guantanamo
tried to commit suicide together.
An Iraqi minister in Bush's puppet government estimates
only 1/4 of Iraqis will vote, and hardly anyone in Baghdad.
Russian political leaders are
turning to antisemitism. (It wasn't
just Hitler that was antisemitic; Stalin was, too.)
The cruelty of the Israeli occupation of Palestine can hardly justify
mistreating Jews elsewhere; at the same time, Israel ought to
recognize that showing contempt for another ethnic group costs it
moral authority that it badly needs on this front.
Microsoft is now
requiring users prove they have licenses before
issuing Windows upgrades.
The unethical aspect of Microsoft's conduct is not located in this
policy, but rather in the basic policy of Windows distribution.
Windows is non-free (i.e., user-subjugating) software, and that's
unethical in itself.
I predict this will result in an increase in the number of people
running old versions of Windows without security patches,
and thus an increase in zombie machines that are used for
sending spam, etc.
Pentagon documents obtained by the ACLU reveal a pattern of
torture at various prisons in Iraq.
A Jew reports on visiting Palestine.
What does "ethics" mean in the US? The Republicans have reduced it to
"no sex outside marriage", disregarding all other aspects of conduct.
The author could have cited the way the House Republicans recently
neutralized the Ethics Committee as further support for his point.
However, I must disagree with the claim that Clinton "took advantage"
of Monica Lewinsky. This embodies the conventional prejudice which
imagines that a woman, simply by having sex, has lost something. But
what could that thing be? Only the good opinion of prudes or
possessive men. While that may be of some practical use, ethically
speaking it is meaningless. I don't blame either of them for having
fun together; I do blame Lewinsky for talking about something she
should have kept to herself.
Seymour Hersh: a cult has taken over the US government, and
nobody in
the army dares tell Bush the truth.
Torture Gonzales has served Bush in many ways, aside from pretending
torture is not torture. He also helped Bush avoid confronting the
petitions for clemency from convicted murderers that Bush wanted to
execute. Gonzales wrote biased summaries for Bush, omitting
everything that argued in favor of clemency.
Bush, in confirming these executions, also denied the legal and moral
authority of his office, so as to
duck responsibility for his
decisions.
I agree with Bush on one thing: prisoners do not deserve better
treatment for being religious. Religion does not make people treat
other people better; US prisons are full of religious people (and not
many Atheists). On the contrary, it often leads people to crimes as
severe as murder: Bush, who describes himself as a fervent Christian,
has murdered some hundred thousand Iraqi civilians, and won't allow
the bodies to be counted.
Prisoners sentenced to death should not be spared because they are
Christians, they should be spared because they are people. Even a
mass murderer like Bush should not be executed, once he is in custody
and cannot kill or torture again. We should not sink to his level.
Women on Waves sends ships to various countries
to militate for
abortion rights.
Comparing the European Dream with an America stuck on a detour to the
past.
I disagree with one point in this article.
The European Union is not very democratic,
and unless the new constitution makes it more so,
it should be rejected.
Palestinian militants declared a unilateral truce,
to give Abu Mazen
a chance to negotiate a permanent cease fire. Abu Mazen says Israel
must also halt his attacks, in order to make this happen.
We will see if the Palestinians have a partner for peace.
In advance of Bush's election,
people are fleeing Baghdad if they can.
A "global Somalia" in 50 years?
Thousands of wounded veterans of the Bush forces
know they were
used--and they will hate the men who sent them to fight.
I do not hate the soldiers in the Bush forces, aside from the ones who
torture. Even as I hope I hope that the Iraqi resistance defeats them
and kicks them out the sooner the better, I feel sorry for them, when
I think about the situation they are in. But feeling sorry for those
soldiers must not influence our judgment about the war. I can feel
sorry the for the Iraqi soldiers sent to invade Kuwait, and the German
soldiers in World War I and II, when I think about their situation.
That is no reason to give those armies' any sympathy.
Nobody in the world deserves hatred more than Bush and his
administration. I hope these veterans turn their hate into effective
action, and sweep my country clean of those tyrants.
Spanish bishops have defied the Pope by
supporting programs to
promote condom use.
Police attacked protestors at York University in Toronto.
The protest
consisted of speeches and handing out leaflets. One organizer is in
the hospital due to injuries inflicted by the police.
Even when arresting people who have committed serious crimes,
it is entirely wrong for the police to hit them and injure them
gratuitously.
The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that
the Earth has already
reached the danger point for disastrous effects
of global warming, and humanity has maybe 10 years to take drastic
measures if it is to prevent disaster.
In public, Bliar says reducing global warming is important.
Where it counts, in EU decisionmaking,
he's against trying very hard.
Sri Lanka, under World Bank pressure, is using the tsunami as
an excuse to privatize water supply
and also to promote foreign investments "to reduce poverty" that will
benefit foreign investors rather than the local people.
Putin seems to be killing and imprisoning those who reported--or
investigated--the claims that he organized bombings in Moscow and
blamed them on Chechens as an
excuse for war.
History is full of "terrorist attacks" that were actually plotted by
the political actors that gained power in the aftermath. Therefore,
it behooves every government to act with the utmost transparency
in investigating such attacks.
A Moscow-based magazine in English says
why it supports the Iraq war.
The police in Raleigh, NC, are throwing the book at some local
activists for a crime there is
no evidence they committed.
Deliberately injuring people is a more serious crime than destroying
property, but the police overlooked the former crime, since its
victims were the dissidents they wanted to try for the latter crime.
This alone is reason to conclude that the police have done wrong.
Around a million salmon escaped when storms damaged cages in Scottish
salmon farms, and the escapees could overwhelm and destroy the few wild
salmon that remain.
People have used similar methods to wipe out some insect pests:
specifically by releasing large numbers of sterilized males, far outnumbering
the unsterilized wild males in the area. The result is that most
females breed with the sterilized males and have no offspring.
Another article (for which we could not find a suitable URL) says that
wild salmon are in pretty bad shape already in Scotland, with rather
small populations in many rivers. This makes them even more
vulnerable to acute problems like this one, but it's also a sign
things are not well generally.
Protestors in Germany
stick little US flags on piles of dog doody in the park.
The police are looking for them, even though they are not breaking any law.
Rumsfeld canceled a trip to Germany because
he faces an investigation there for war crimes in Iraq.
I expect that Rumsfeld would be visiting with diplomatic immunity, and
could not actually face prosecution during this visit. If that is
correct, his cancelation of the trip is actually an attempt to put
pressure on Germany to give him some sort of permanent immunity.
Rumsfeld wants to commit war crimes with impunity.
I hope that Germany stands firm against this pressure. They should
put him on trial in Nuremberg!
500 species in the US may be
extinct in 2 decades due to urban sprawl.
(Maybe expensive oil will save them.)
A thourough history of the 2000 Camp David talks shows that
Arafat wasn't particularly responsible for their failure.
The deal he was offered was one no Palestinian leader could accept. Neither
side was solely responsible for the failure--the talks just didn't work out.
Afterwards, Arafat tried to prevent Sharon's visit to the mosques of
Jerusalem--which shows that he sought to avoid the violence which he
correctly anticipated this visit would spark.
This disproves the frequent claim that Arafat was the obstacle to
peace in recent years. The question is whether the Israeli government
is willing to allow peace.
The
10 worst corporations of 2004.
RAWA teaches Afghan girls to
read in secret schools. Soldiers threatened stores that distributed their
magazine.
Bush:
simple, violent and extreme - a dangerous combination.
Scott Ritter reports that Bush is considering trying to use death squads
to assassinate members of the Iraqi resistance--after having used them
already to assassinate former supporters of the Baath party.
I think Ritter is right on the mark: this won't work, but its failure
won't excuse Bush for having tried it.
Abuse of prisoners by British Bush forces was
widespread.
Triumphalism in Washington,
Despair Elsewhere
How the invasion of Iraq stacks up against international law.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who denounces both Republicans and Democrats
for taking corporate money and denounces Bush as fascist,
may run for Attorney General of New York State.
If he does, I will support him.
Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney (for participation
in the 9/11 attacks).
Details of torture committed by
British troops in the Bush forces.
There is evidence that the shooting of Robert Kennedy was a
conspiracy, though there are divergent ideas of who was behind it.
If the continue-the-war theory is correct, it would fit a pattern of
deaths in the US that might have been political assassinations,
including the suspicious death of Senator Wellstone.
Researchers are studying ways to assign a value in monetary terms to
environment changes, which can be compared with the value (in monetary
terms) of other effects.
This is interesting, but it doesn't go far enough. I see two weaknesses
in it:
1. Much of this work still assumes that the only value is that which
can be measured in economic terms. To measure the value of a cleaner
lake by how much money people spend to fish there is to assign a value
of zero to fishing there done by those who didn't need to spend.
2. The harm done by environmental damage can't be measured this way
until we have actually seen it occur. We also need to take
precautions to avoid various sorts of catastrophes which are
improbable but large.
Tsunamis occur in the Indian ocean a few times a century, so the
expected cost of removing mangroves at the coast could have been
calculated last year. But the side effects of chemical pollution or
extinction of species are generally not known until after they happen.
To treat the danger as zero because we don't know its magnitude
is clearly a mistake.
Protests in Russia, and how of poor pensioners makes the change a
disaster for them.
Colombia paid agents in Venezuela to kidnap someone alleged to be a
member of the FARC guerrilla group.
This led to a rupture of
diplomatic relations. Now Colombia accuses Venezuela of supporting
the FARC.
Since Uribe is pretty much a puppet of the US, this looks like a
planned excuse for a US-supported invasion of Venezuela. Want to
invade some country? Just say it supports "terrorists".
The FARC does sometimes use terrorist tactics, but not as much as the
Colombian Army and the paramilitary groups it cooperates with.
A UN proposal for
substantial foreign aid to reduce world poverty.
All charges against Starbucks union organizer Daniel Gross
were dropped.
The policeman who arrested him was ordered to lie and did so. Why
aren't these cops on trial for perjury?
The government of Sri Lanka is trying to use tsunami reconstruction as
an opportunity to impose a World Bank plan that the people oppose.
The Thai government's response to the tsunami is to deport thousands of
Burmese refugees to a vicious tyranny that will enslave them.
Thai employers like being able to pay so little to Burmese refugees.
But what enables them to do that? Probably because the Thai
government makes their status precarious, so they cannot complain.
Bush wants to fill the Supreme Court with extremists.
Americans may be able to block this by organizing.
Bush is freeing some prisoners in Afghanistan.
Some had been tortured. Some were
imprisoned because a personal enemy lied about them.
Shrimp farms devastate the local ecology and
can leave thousands
with no water and no place to grow food. They also make the coast
more vulnerable to natural disasters, such as tsunamis. And after a
few years, they are exhausted and the land can't be used for anything.
Election Will Divide Iraq More Than Saddam Ever Did.
The Iraqi resistance is
shutting down the distribution of gas and
electricity.
The
music factories lost a battle in France, where a court refused
to let them disconnect certain music-sharers from the Internet.
The record companies like to call themselves the "music industry".
The term "industry" implies making something in factories, so it is
legitimate to call them the "music factories".
What if the next tsunami sweeps away an Indian nuclear power plant?
What damage did this tsunami do to it? The authorities won't say.
Most journalists in Iraq don't dare leave their hotel rooms, and report as
"news" whatever the Bush forces tell them.
(The editors, who know this, usually don't tell the public.)
This is convenient for the Bush forces since it enables them
to get away with lies.
British soldiers in the Bush forces are on trial for
torturing prisoners.
It seems that British and American torturers used more or less similar
practices. How similar were they? Perhaps this could be evidence
that the torture was coordinated from higher up.
Protestors in Guatemala were
blocking construction of a potentially dangerous mine in their area. The
government attacked them, killing
some of them. Now it has sealed off the area so that the public
cannot see what it did.
The same company is trying to use NAFTA in order to be able to mine more profitably and dangerously in California.
NAFTA's provisions transfer sovereignty from the people
to corporations; NAFTA must be abolished.
Israeli
peace activist Tali Fahima is on trial
after having been held incommunicado for most of a year.
She is accused of aiding terrorists, but the accusations
don't make sense.
The UN is starting to
record damage claims from Palestinians whose
property was seized or destroyed by Israel's annexation wall.
Rabbis and imams met in Europe to
denounce religious extremism.
Some Christian clergy were there also, but the Christian extremists
that back Bush were not represented.
An article about the role of the Council on Foreign Relations
in planning to impose the new world order--and its links to many
other powerful institutions.
I am not in a position to evaluate the statements about the CFR in
particular, but they seem at least plausible. In any case, it is
clear that the globalization of business power is imposed, not natural
or inevitable. Whatever the role of the CFR in planning these
measures, it is clear they are planned, and clear they are wrong.
Here's what Lord Hoffman said about the UK's Guantanamo Lite:
The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people
living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values,
comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.
However, it is not clear that their decision will stick, any more than
the US Supreme Court decision that prisoners in Guantanamo have the
right to a lawyer and a hearing will stick.
The "Eyes on the Prize" documentary on the Civil Rights Movement has
been effectively
censored by the combination of copyright and media
consolidation. Civil disobedience is being suggested.
Moazzam Beg has spent 3 years in solitary confinement Guantanamo, and
has occasionally been tortured. Now he and 3 other UK citizens are
being released, but not the hundreds of others who were treated
similarly. Pakistan handed him off to the US without a hearing, which
in itself was a violation of his human rights.
Bush rewards subordinates who lie, and
fires those who tell the truth.
The UK offers to take over
10% of many poor countries' debt for
the sake of education and health care.
I think this program is a good thing, and I wish I could
believe that Bush would follow it. However, it would
be even better to cancel the debt entirely. This debt was
amassed through corrupt schemes in which the creditors actively
participated, and it would be good to teach people the lesson
that such debts will be canceled. World Bank projects have often
been very harmful to the "benificiaries".
Tsunami Must Not Sweep Away
Restrictions on Indonesian Military - ETAN
US commandos are operating in Iran exploring
possible targets for an invasion.
President of Fabricated Crises
A Monsanto-funded PR machine tries to destroy the careers of
scientists
who publish info about problems caused by genetically
modified organisms.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which participates in this
campaign, was also paid by Microsoft to attack Free Software.
This link
gives information about this (though it hides free software behind the
term "open source" and refers to the GNU system as "Linux".
How Africa can end hunger better without GMOs.
An Iraqi general tells how he was arrested and tortured by the Bush
forces,
who considered the Geneva Conventions as worthless.
Now that Abu-Mazen is recognized as a democratically elected
leader of Palestine,
what can he actually do?
Hanan Ashrawi writes about nonviolence in Palestine,
and her background that inspired her ideas.
Some American victims of Bush's war are
helping Iraqi victims.
Kofi Annan is
replacing staff at the UN to deal with accusations of corruption.
The corruption may be real--but compare the pressure against Annan,
who is not personally involved in the corruption, with the way
Representative DeLay is being treated. He IS personally involved in
corruption. The real reason Bush doesn't like Annan is that Annan
stood up for international law and said Bush's invasion of Iraq was
against it. Bush ethics: those who criticize him should be punished
if possible, while those who support him should never be.
It used to be a joke that governments would rather bury all traces of
a mistake than admit they made one. Now the US
is applying this to human beings: kidnap them and keep them in prison
forever rather than admit it was a mistake.
US officials are now citing, as the reason to keep people in prison
without any charges, the fact that they might be angry at having been
unjustly imprisoned and tortured. So angry that they might fight the
US afterwards.
Aside from being immoral, this is also entirely absurd. Bush has made
millions of Arabs hate the US enough to possibly fight. The 500 or so
men in Guantanamo are a drop in the bucket in comparison. Keeping them
out of the fight will make no difference.
If Bush doesn't want the unjustly imprisoned to hate him, he ought to
beg their forgiveness.
The Israeli soldier charged with shooting Tom Hurndall admits he lied
about it--but says he was
ordered to shoot unarmed people.
He's only charged with manslaughter, which seems like too little
for a soldier that shot a protestor.
Gonzales claimed, and claims, that Bush can
disregard laws that protect human rights.
In Baghdad, everyone on all sides constantly lives in fear.
The Bush forces, afraid that any Iraqi is their enemy, threaten to kill anyone
that has the misfortune to be near their path. The police wear masks.
The planned elections are
not going well. The four provinces where--the Bush forces admit--the
election may not operate include half the country's population.
We won't go home and we won't vote, say refugees of Fallujah
The
American Gulags Become Permanent
The Bolivian government said it would cancel the privatized water
contract in El Alto, but did so in a vague way, failing to say when.
The people are
refusing to accept this.
Gush Shalom: There is no "window for peace" without serious
steps towards
ending the occupation of Palestine.
Is al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
How CBS executives
used a minor issue to discredit the story about how Bush used family
connections to evade the draft, and end the careers of the people who involved.
I won't criticize Bush for trying to get out of the draft, since few
wanted to fight in a war widely perceived as unjust. I do criticize
him for failing to speak out against the unjust war.
The US made an airliner
return to London because it objected to one of the passengers.
At least this is better than letting the plane land and shipping
the passenger to Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Syria to be tortured.
Bush has
quietly ended the search for weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. The lie campaign served its purpose well--first in 2003 as an
excuse to invade the country, and in 2004 to convince many Americans
to support Bush.
An American held a
brief public protest in Burma--a place where protests are hardly seen.
The Burmese government could learn from Bush, and permit ineffective
protests in designated "free speech zones" where nobody will see them.
Most of the resistance fighters escaped from Falluja, but the city
itself was ruined, as few buildings remain usable. People who return
are still in danger--
from Bush forces snipers and from disease.
Indonesia and Sri Lanka are paying more each
year for debt service than the amount of the aid they have been promised.
The Indonesian government is trying to suggest that Acehnese separatists
would attack international aid workers. However, aid workers
don't think the separatists would do that.
This looks like an artificial excuse to continue excluding aid workers
from parts of Aceh.
On the third anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, with
increasing evidence of pervasive torture practices, it stands as a
symbol of Dubya's contempt for law and justice.
Arguing for medical and insurance reform
rather than malpractice law reform.
Human decisions didn't make the tsunami, but they make various places
more or less vulnerable to damage from this and other disasters.
Republicans have changed the rules and the leadership of the House
Ethics Committee,
to inactivate it.
In 1994, the mass media were somewhat more independent and had a
little more integrity than they do now. Today's corporate media will
probably choose not to bother the Republicans by making this a
scandal.
Bush only wants to hear "good news". If things are getting worse,
he doesn't want to know.
The picture of the world that Bush presents in his speeches is
thoroughly false, and when you confront one falsehood, he supports it
with another falsehood. But these might not be lies--perhaps Bush
really believes them all. Perhaps his rejection of bad news is a
means to disconnect himself from reality, to enable himself to truly
believe a picture that is increasingly false.
However, I'd expect that Cheney knows the truth.
India is joining the US in bypassing the UN for
tsunami aid.
FRITZ STERN, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a scholar
of how Hitler came to power, says Bush and the Christian
fanatics in the US
are using similar methods.
US electronic voting is
not just vulnerable to fraud by the companies. There are signs of such
fraud in the last election.
The Bush regime is trying to legitimize torture
by diverting attention to the question of precisely how much torture to allow.
When Gonzales says he never supported torture, it really means he
intends to
persistenly support torture by persistently pretending it
isn't torture.
The evidence used to imprison 7 people without trial in the UK
has been leaked--and it is crap.
This shows why the right to a trial is so important: so that you can't
be imprisoned based on vague suspicions and manufactured evidence. If
we could see the evidence (if any) that's the basis for holding
prisoners in Guantanamo, I think it would also prove to be junk.
New Pentagon Vision Transforms War Agenda
I have not seen Barnett's book myself, and I am very curious to see
it, because this book review gives conflicting impressions of whether
the book proposes these changes or projects and criticizes them.
I recommend another book: Forever Peace, by Haldeman.
Sumate, the Venezuelan opposition group funded by the US National
Endowment for Democracy, is
linked to participation in the attempt to
kidnap and overthrow President Chavez, and to the falsified exit poll
that is being used to claim the election was rigged.
The Iraqi resistance is continuing to
increase its activity.
Bush is now asking Congress to officially legalize imprisonment
without trial.
Here's what this implies: locked up for life
based on evidence that might be
fabricated.
Here's the House Democratic staff's report recommending a challenge
to the Ohio election.
The challenge did occur, this time, but it did not achieve anything,
because the Republicans' do not mind accepting a victory based on
fraud. "Running an honest election" is not one of their virtues.
How the drug companies have made
medicine in the US ill.
Ten preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute.
The article says that Congress must investigate rather than certify
the Electoral College. Of course, that's not what happened. Today's
Republicans define "free and fair election" as one where they win.
After the tsunami, hatred of Dalits (untouchables) in India extends
into the refugee camps.
The Iraqi resistance
killed the Bush governor of Bahgdad, and broadcast video on the internet.
People who say that real elections cannot be held now are right, but
people who say it will only get harder to hold elections are also
right. I think Bush will either hold an election in which many Iraqis
can't really vote (it's a habit for him) or postpone them forever.
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFSMOnsantovsFarmerReport1.13.05.pdf
