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The proposed EU Constitution is slanted towards business, and away from democracy.
A network of planespotters are tracking the movements of the plane that the CIA uses to bring people to various countries that will torture them.
The last article in that same page shows that even FBI agents objected to Bush regime torture policies. The responsibility for torture leads straight to the White House--starting with Clinton, but Bush made things much worse.
When Bush is convicted of crimes against the peace and war crimes, he'll spend his life in prison. It might seem irrelevant to try him for these acts of torture too, but it must be done.
Bush claims to want to improve women's rights in Iraq, but as usual, it is a lie.
How the Israeli army treats Palestinians at checkpoints.
The National Endowment for Democracy is an organization funded mainly by the US to buy and distort elections, and sometimes overthrow governments. Strangely, the AFL-CIO has a history of helping in such efforts.
A town in Pennsylvania decided to require teaching "intelligent design", which is biblical creationism disguised as science.
Exit polls and election fraud accusations, in Venezuela, the US and the Ukraine.
The families of dead US soldiers have raised 600,000 dollars for Fallujah refugees. This is the real spirit of charity.
Fighting continues in Falluja--even though much of the city has been destroyed, it has not been taken. Refugees mostly cannot return.
Coal miners in Wales bought their mine as it was about to close, and have run it profitably for ten years now.
Another water revolt is beginning in Bolivia.
Debunking Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative": It won't fight forest fires, it will just sell out.
A US dentist has been imprisoned 7 years without trial, and labeled crazy. Why crazy? Because he says he has been tortured in prison.
Former Spanish president Aznar destroyed records relating to the Madrid bombings before he left office.
Bush and Musharraf: is Bush serious about WMD, or Al Qa'ida, or anything relevant to protecting the US from attacks?
It seems that sonar systems give whales the bends, which can kill them.
A UK union leader, a backer of the Labor Party, is accused of election fraud.
It would not surprise me. After all, how could a supporter of Blair's policies win an honest union election?
The ACLU has proof that torture has widespread in the Bush regime, and it ties high officials to the practice.
These officials will probably tell the judge that nobody's allowed to tie them to anything--after all, that would be torture ;-}.
The Bush regime continues to disregard the Supreme Court rulings in favor of those detained without trial, and continues to argue that no one has any legal rights.
Wal-mart won the Grinch of the Year award, with Cinta and Comcast as runners-up.
NIH researchers have been taking money from drug companies, and selling them the NIH's prestige--and its decisions.
The only way the NIH can be honest is by completely forbidding its employees to accept either employment or gifts from the drug companies.
A report that the Bush forces have been unable to capture Fallujah, that the resistance continues even though the city is half destroyed.
A small amount of bombing can make a building or a city uninhabitable for civilians, but often soldiers can keep fighting for a long time in the ruins. This happened in World War II in Monte Cassino and Stalingrad.
UK government agencies are working overtime to destroy documents before a new law gives the public the right to see them.
Subcontracting the war seemed like a clever idea to Bush until things started getting dangerous. Now the contractors are finding it hard to recruit mercenaries too.
If there are 3.5 million homeless Americans, that means over 1% of Americans are homeless.
The US plans sanctions against Sudan.
The Iraqi resistance's most effective attack yet on the Bush forces appears to have been a suicide bombing based on very accurate intelligence.
This article says we should disbelieve the statement that this was a suicide bombing.
It doesn't present any evidence that the statement itself is a lie, and I am not convinced; but it does seem to show Bush is spinning the story, so as to falsely link the Iraqi resistance with terrorism in general.
Attacking the troops of an occupying army is not terrorism, it is simply war. Bombing hospitals and using napalm is terrorism.
The EU could not agree on fishing limits.
If they were together in a lifeboat, they would argue about who should bale how much water, while it sank under them.
Developing fetuses are very sensitive to air pollution.
The Republican party wants to protect fetuses from the fate of not being born. But it has no interest in protecting them from being born with a high likelihood of cancer, which I think is worse.
The Bush administration recognizes it is losing the war for the hearts and minds of the rest of the world. Its answer: plant lies to discredit people that tell the truth.
American journalist Stephen Vincent visited Iraq pretending to be Yugoslavian, and got a good picture of how Iraqis hate the occupying forces.
(Note, I think he has underestimated the fraction of Iraqi Arabs that are Sunnis. According to my vague memory, it is more like 30% or 40%.)
A committee of British MPs concluded it will take ten years to stabilize Iraq. That's assuming the Iraqi resistance loses.
On the average, in the US, it takes three times the minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment. This means that a couple that both work at the minimum wage can't afford one--unless they both work 60 hours a week.
Sikhs protesting violently in England shut down a play that they felt insulted the Sikh religion. Police tried to stop the violence, but the UK government has done little to prevent this blatant crime.
Having seen the text of the play, I can understand why Sikhs might feel offended by it. It strikes me as somewhat unfair, too. That is no excuse for trying to censor it.
When Mohan Singh suggests that a theater company should not dare to offend 600,000 Sikhs in Britain, he endorses censorship. No group, no matter how numerous or powerful or deserving, is entitled to forbid what offends it--not Sikhs, not Jews, not Muslims, not Christians, not businessmen, not even Atheists and Free Software developers deserve such privilege.
Shame on Mohan Singh, and shame on any Sikh who will not denounce what he said.
Report from Iraq: civilians wounded by the Bush forces.
Some of the lawyers representing the people imprisoned on suspicion under British anti-terrorism law have decided to resign in protest against Blair's decision to ignore the Law Lords.
The FBI referred to "torture" of prisoners in December 2003 and the information also suggests that Bush directly authorized it.
The Dutch government tried a dirty trick to pass the EU software patents directive in a meeting about fisheries. It looked like their trick was going to succeed, but it was blocked by Poland.
Those challenging the Ohio vote have begun court cases, and hearings reported a whole host of Republican cheating, including throwing away ballots, and moving votes from one candidate to another.
Meanwhile, the Republicans who run the Ohio elections have blocked and sabotaged the recount that was demanded weeks ago.
Privatization of the railways in UK was supposed to make them better. But government-run trains are running better than privately operated trains.
Railway privatization has been a complete failure, but Bliar continues to pretend it is a success.
Blair, defying the Law Lords, insists on maintaining the preventive imprisonment policy.
For Blair, abolishing human rights is so important that he will fight anything that gets in his way.
A Hamas leader suggests Hamas could agree to a cease-fire for the sake of the Palestinian elections.
Bush is once again tapping the UN's phones, this time hoping to find some excuse to discredit Mohamed El Baradei, head of the IAEA.
Baradei has done his job honestly, and hasn't pandered to Bush's desire to make Iran look bad. In Bush's view, anyone that doesn't pander to him ought to be replaced with someone who will.
If Bush succeeds in finding some flaw, any flaw, in El Baradei, he will urge the world to be aghast. Bush himself, however, is always supposed to receive the benefit of the doubt even when there's no doubt.
Israel is confiscating Palestinians' land to expand settlements, despite claiming it has a policy not to do so.
When the Border Police (who have a reputation for cruelty) attacked a peaceful protest, they noticed that someone was filming them. So they attacked her, then threw her in prison, where she was given a deportation order without a hearing.
In a state based on lies, telling people the truth is the worst crime.
In the UK, a Christmas TV program (on a commercial channel) is going to tell the public what scholars have known for decades about how the Bible was written and how much of its historical statements might be inaccurate.
Unocal settled a lawsuit filed by Burmese refugees because of Unocal's disrespect for human rights in its operations in Burma.
Iran is executing mentally ill girls who were put into prostitution by their parents.
The policy seems to be similar to California's "three strikes and you're out" policy, but even more cruel.
Australia has unilaterally announced a plan control all shipping and stop ships within 1000 miles.
I suspect this has little to do with real concerns of terrorism, and everything to do with stopping refugees from arriving by ship.
Papua New Guinea and Indonesia are both less than 400 miles from Australia, so in effect Australia has demanded control over their territorial waters. I hope Indonesia gives a firm public response.
A 10-year-old girl in Philadelphia was arrested for bringing scissors to school.
The excuses that the policemen were simply following rules or acted "in good faith" are irrelevant. Cruelty doesn't have to be personally directed to be wrong. Tyranny often functions through rules; if the rules are cruel, applying them is wrong.
US and Russian nuclear missiles are still on hair-trigger readiness.
I can understand why Putin feels it is necessary to develop more advanced nuclear missiles. While Son of Star Wars is a complete failure today, he cannot count on that to be true forever.
Terrorism in various European countries has been linked to secret NATO cold war armies.
I don't know whether the September 11 attacks were organized by the US government to manipulate US politics, but it appears that this has already been done in Europe.
Get America Working proposes that the US should tax employee payroll less, and natural resources more. This would encourage companies to conserve natural resources while hiring more people.
The idea makes sense, but we need to note that a substantial part of the problem in the US is because workers depend on employers to pay for their health care. This isn't officially part of payroll tax, but it acts economically as if it were. There are only two ways to solve it: take away people's health care (which is what companies are trying to do), or set up a national health care system (which Democrats used to be in favor of, but Bush is hardly likely to want to do).
Whatever Bush says his plans are for tax reform, I expect his real aim will be to cut taxes even more for the rich, while eliminating social programs that benefit everyone else.
The Inuit are accusing the US of destroying their homes and way of life by failing to act to reduce global warming.
How Halliburton gets no-bid contracts--by subcontracting to minority-owned businesses.
For more information about Halliburton, see here.
The UK's Law Lords ruled that UK's Guantanamo Lite is illegal because it violates human rights requirements.
The Pentagon seeks authorization to trample the environment and public health.
The Ukrainian opposition candidate was apparently poisoned with dioxin.
A new election has been set by Ukraine's Supreme Court.
1/4 of all bird species will be extinct or nearly extinct in a century, according to a study that examined the specific situations of each species.
Eyewitness testimony of an incident in Ohio that looks like vote-counting fraud.
Programmer Clint Curtis claims a Florida congressman asked him to write software for voting machine fraud.
Many journalists in the US are in prison or threatened with prison to force them to reveal confidential sources.
If this practice catches on, people won't talk anonymously to journalists, which means even further suppression of such news.
A former US marine says the Bush forces soldiers shot civilians indiscriminately--not just once, but regularly.
This doesn't surprise me, because the Bush forces mostly despise the Iraqis, and when armed men despise certain people they tend to shoot those people.
The Kyoto treaty is too weak to do its job.
The idea of removing CO2 from the atmosphere is attractive, but is there any basis to believe it is feasible?
Blair admits he has failed to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Higher gasoline taxes are an obvious solution, but Blair prefers to spend a lot of money surveilling the movements of all cars.
The counterargument by the CBI is typical business tokenism: "Please judge that the small good some of us do compensates for the great harm the rest of us do."
CIA Agent Says Bosses Ordered Him To Falsify WMD Reports.
The US has become a net importer of food.
Maybe it is good that food is grown elsewhere instead, since US farming uses a large amount of petroleum. Other producers use much less oil for the same quantity of food produced.
The paramedics who found Dr. Kelly's body say they don't believe he committed suicide.
An Israeli was convicted for participating in a terrorist group that aimed to kill Palestinians.
This is the tip of the iceberg--for instance, it is normal practice for settlers to shoot at any Palestinian that they can see.
The UNHCR says that Iraq is so dangerous that refugees should not return there. But Blair can't afford to admit that attacking Iraq has made it a dangerous place, so he forces Iraqi refugees to return home where they can be killed.
A Pentagon report admits the truth: Iraqis in general and Muslims in general see the Bush forces as a conqueror, and recognize Bush talk of supporting freedom and democracy as bullshit.
(Bush can't recognize freedom or democracy even when they finally bite him.)
It is noteworthy that this article was published by a UK newspaper. When I read it, I suspected that US newspapers would not cover this, because the US press is too subservient to admit these facts. That seems to be mostly true.
5,000 soldiers have deserted from the Bush forces.
Americans who escaped to Canada rather that fight in Iraq are citing torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions to justify refugee status.
Bush policies of using some Iraqi groups to fight others is bearing fruit, in the form of incipient civil war.
Many Shi'ite groups have formed a joint electoral list. If Shi'ites participate in the election while Sunnis fight against the occupation, this leads in the direction of civil war.
Iraqis should remember who their common enemy is. If they let Bush divide them, that could give Bush a victory he could not otherwise have gained.
France is adopting a law that would prohibit sexist remarks.
It is wrong to prohibit the expression of any opinion, even a bigoted opinion.
Gary Webb, the reporter who broke the story of the CIA involvement in drug trafficking, was found dead in an apparent suicide. It looks fishy.
I doubt that anyone would have killed him now because of what he wrote in 1996--if someone was motivated enough, I don't see why he would have waited 8 years. I wonder what Webb was investigating now.
Senator Byrd rebuked the US Senate for not paying enough attention to the bills it is passing.
Hamas has stopped attacks against Israel for the sake of the Palestinian elections, and offers a longer truce.
Fighting continues in the ruins of Fallujah. Over 10% of the Bush forces in Fallujah were killed or wounded.
Desmond Tutu criticized South African president Mbeki for tolerating tyranny in Zimbabwe.
Mbeki is a terrible disappointment. Of course, one could not ask for him to be the equal of Mandela, but he has supported a long series of disastrous, cruel and undemocratic policies.
In June 2003, a soldier in the Bush forces tried to report on the torture he had seen. His superiors had him declared "mentally unstable" to shut him up.
This doesn't surprise me. Bush sets the tone for the people that work for him: the truth is unimportant, power is all that matters.
Fighting between Sunnis and Kurds is heating up in Northern Iraq--and Bush forces policies are partly responsible for this move towards civil war.
Of course, those who work with Bush will be treated as collaborators--what else should they expect?
When Bush brings in Kurds to suppress the resistance of Sunnis, the more politically astute will think, "The empire is practicing divide-and-rule". But many who are less educated and prone to racism will think, "The Kurds are our enemies, now as always". Perhaps that is what the Bush forces hope for: to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines, and use some groups to rule the rest. Unity among Iraqis gives them strength; division could make them weak. Maybe Bush hopes that Kurds will be the permanent occupying force of the Sunni parts of Iraq.
A UK commission says 1/3 of UK waters must be placed off limits to fishing, so fish stocks can recover.
Here's the report's summary.
Chile's government accepted responsibility for the torture committed by the US-supported military dictatorship.
When will the Bush regime accept responsibility for its systematic acts of torture?
20 amazing facts about voting in the US election.
Pinochet, former US-installed dictator of Chile, will stand trial in Chile for one of the murders his regime committed.
In the 1980s, a leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed and damaged thousands. Another leak now ties the parent company in the US to responsibility for the deaths.
Dow, which bought this business from Union Carbide, has denounced a hoax in which a prankster, claiming to speak for Dow, said that Dow took responsibility for the disaster of Bhopal.
(I have a feeling that this denunciation is also a hoax.)
Evidence that most of the discarded ballots in Ohio were probably votes for Kerry.
The Bush forces are using napalm bombs in Fallujah, and burning phosphorus shells.
I seem to recall that using chemical weapons against civilians was one of the things Saddam Hussein was accused of doing. As with the torture rooms and rape rooms that Bush said he was going to get rid of, all he did was change the names on the door.
The deadly hot summer of 2003 has been tied to human activity. But that was just a foretaste: by the end of this century most summers will be even hotter.
The Chinese regime executed a Tibetan after a secret trial, and threatens to execute another Tibetan, a popular religious leader, also after a secret trial.
These secret trials are the Chinese equivalent of the Bush regime's practice of labeling people as "enemy combatants". Without a real public trial, governments can imprison anyone they dislike and pretend the reason is for crimes.
Israel is not allowing students from Gaza to attend universities in the West Bank and other countries. They are being arbitrarily prevented from leaving.
The UK embassy says the road to Baghdad airport is "too dangerous to use". In other words, the resistance is gaining ground against the Bush forces, along the standard trajectory of a guerrilla war.
The Telegraph, which accused MP George Galloway of treason and being paid by Saddam Hussein, lost a libel case.
It looks like most of the evidence produced against Galloway was fraudulent, and the rest of it doesn't really mean he did anything wrong.
Red-State America Against Itself
When Liberalism can no longer appeal, all that's left is a battle between two kinds of Conservatives.
A leaked ICRC report accuses Bush of increasing repression in Guantanamo, and criticizes doctors for aiding torturers.
A new organization aims to end torture in South Asia.
There is no word on when this organization will extend its operations to the US.
Police in Nepal arrested a 15-year-old girl, apparently because she witnessed rapes committed by the army. Her parents are now convinced she was killed, but they cannot get a straight story about when or where. It sounds like a Nepalling experience.
As Blair threatens $4000 fines for not getting a mandatory biometric ID card, opponents report many are saying they'd rather go to prison than accept these cards.
Three Cheers! With determination to fight for freedom, people can defeat the tyranny of Big Brolair.
A study found that marijuana can cause psychosis in certain people, especially if they start using it in their teens.
Australia seems to have bullied Vanuatu into replacing its prime minister by threatening to cut of aid.
I have seen various stories about the motive for this. Australia claims it is demanding reforms to end corruption, but that claim is unbelievable.
Vohor has only had 6 months in office; if there is a serious problem with corruption, it must have developed over more than 6 months, so why the precipitous action now? Meanwhile, Australia surely would not take action so quickly about a mere issue of corruption.
I've also seen a claim the reason is simply that Vohor rejected an Australian hegemony policy which involves stationing police in countries in the region and dictating their policies. I do not know.
Ohio has not finished counting the votes, and the Republican in charge (who is also a part of the Bush campaign) is trying to impede the process.
A doctor's eyewitness report from Fallujah: thousands of civilians wounded, and that counts only the ones that could be brought to his hospital.
Two kinds of antisemitism, against Jews and against Palestinians, end up looking similar.
The US plans to increase the use of coal to generate electricity, which would greatly increase global warming.
If scarcity of oil leads to more burning of coal, it could mean that global warming increases world-wide. We have already seen positive-feedback in atmospheric CO2; natural processes add to the CO2 that humans release. The result is likely to be disaster.
Here are my responses to the consultation in this link. They might interest some readers.
A scandal has broken in Germany as army recruits were treated to Bush-style abuse.
An earlier note points out that the torture methods used in Abu Ghraib were derived from army training methods.
Somerville, Massachusetts, aldermen discuss divesting from Israel.
Republican Challenges Presidential Election Based on Exit Polls!
Israeli soldiers were talking about the "10-year-old girl" before they shot her. But the killers face only light charges.
The Bush forces regularly shot civilians in Fallujah, even civilians carrying white flags.
An Iranian exile group claims that Iran is developing a nuclear missile.
As events have shown that nuclear missiles are the only way to be safe from Bush, I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. It would be only sensible for Iran to develop such a weapon. But this also sounds suspiciously like the phony intelligence that Bush contrived in the case of Iraq.
Does anyone know if this exile group is real, or funded by Bush?
In the future, supermarkets and any stranger who wants to know may be able to use a radio scanner to tell what you have in your pockets.
I don't see any problem in using RFIDs on wholesale drug bottles, but it needs to be illegal to use them for retail sales.
Some US churches, led by the Presbyterian Church, have adopted plans for divestment of stock in corporations that do business in Israel and profit from the occupation. As usual, supporters of the occupation try to paint this as "antisemitism"; but this time, they are also threatening to burn churches.
An Israeli supports the call for disinvestment, and denounces the smear campaign.
Here's the actual statement of the Presbyterian Church.
Barghouti was persuaded to withdraw from running for president of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas, the candidate that the US wants, says he could stop attacks against Israel. But will Israel stop attacks against Palestinians?
Gush Shalom published this ad:
Sharon has promised the Americans and the Europeans not to sabotage the Palestinian elections.
And in practice?
* The members of a regional election committee were held up for six hours at a checkpoint between Yata and Hebron.
* Instead of setting prisoners free, the army continues every night to arrest activists of all factions, including people active in the election campaign.
* While the Fatah leadership in Ramallah is discussing the elections, Fatah activist Muhammad Rassan and two of his colleagues were killed in a Ramallah suburb.
* The Israeli army continues to shoot without warning at Palestinian policemen who are carrying arms, calling them `terrorists'. These are the same policemen who are supposes to maintain order during the election campaign.
Under such conditions, free elections are impossible. We are warning again: Don't listen to what Sharon is saying, look at what Sharon is doing!
Gush Shalom ad published in Ha'aretz November 26, 2004
Lexmark printers spyon the users' printing activity
A California lawsuit against Diebold for its voting machines was settled prematurely with a slap on the wrist.
The band Wilco has found success through cooperating with file-sharing.
More information is coming out on how Dr. Khan in Pakistan arranged to provide nuclear weapons know-how and equipment to other countries.
The preceding article in that page is, I suspect, an example of black propaganda. Bush probably told the CIA to prepare the way to invade Iran.
The Republicans have quietly cut a large part of government support for college education. Increasingly only Americans with wealthy backgrounds can afford to go to college. The rest will be kept ignorant.
College education tends to make people less provincial, and gives them more exposure to a variety of views. The Republicans would probably prefer to reduce the number of Americans who have such exposure.
A man tortured by police in Sri Lanka was murdered before he could testify against them.
Blunkett explains your terror nightmares - be
very afraid.
Civil liberties groups condemned
Blunkett's plans for new forms of repression in the UK.
Bill Moyers, the main progressive show host on PBS TV is retiring and
being replaced by someone accustomed to viewing everything through the
lens of business.
Brancaccio's show, Marketplace, takes an attitude of
looking at all aspects of life in terms of its effect
on business, as if nothing else mattered. After hearing
it a few times, I took such a disgust to it that I began
switching my radio off before it could start.
The WTO is planning to
commit mass murder, by forcing India to stop
making cheap anti-AIDS drugs. Any person who dies as a result will
have been murdered by the WTO. The WTO is the enemy of humanity and must be
destroyed at any cost.
I support the people who oppose this cruel plan, but I wish they would
stop playing into the enemy's hands through use of the enemy's
propaganda terms, "intellectual
property" and "protection".
Many obscene amendments weakening environmental laws
have been added to an appropriations bill in a congressional conference
committee.
Conservatives killed the intelligence reform bill that proposed to
attack civil liberties and impose new forms of surveillance. Not
because they care about civil liberties or surveillance, but to
support the Pentagon.
Reports that the Bush forces regularly shot civilians
in Fallujah while they were carrying white flags.
Allawi, who Bush appointed to rule Iraq, is following in the
footsteps of Saddam Hussein, and is now becoming just as hated
in Iraq.
Bush, are you listening? Shall we invade Iraq to liberate Iraqis from
their tyrannical ruler?
The UN General Assembly is starting to reject US-sponsored
resolutions about violations of human rights out of disgust
for other US actions.
I sympathize with those who condemn the US for its contempt for human
rights, but rallying behind the dictators and murderers that the US
criticizes is the wrong way to fight back. Instead of opposing the US
when it is right, people should fight the US when it does wrong.
US institutions have honed a technique to help opposition candidates
beat unfriendly strongmen in democratic elections--and to overcome
attempts to rig these elections.
Will they ever be able to bring these methods home, and restore
democracy in the US?
The FDA, which is supposed to regulate drugs and ensure they are safe,
has been captured by the drug companies to the point where it
suppresses results they don't like. Now it is trying to
squelch one of its own scientists who still tries to do his job.
This is not an isolated incident; the US government as a whole has
been captured by business, except in the areas where it has been
captured by religious nuts. This is why it works so hard to nullify
democracy both at home and abroad. What we see here is simply an
example.
However, a reason is not an excuse. Each act of corruption or cruelty
that the US government commits is no less wrong for being part of a
systematic pattern of corruption and cruelty.
Blair is
planning new attacks on civil liberties, which are
being strongly condemned.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem
calls for the resignation of Israel's army chief of staff, for granting
soldiers impunity for killing civilians.
400 protestors against Coca Cola company were arrested
violently in India.
The campaign against the spread of AIDS is failing to keep women from
being infected, because men
won't let them refuse sex or insist on condoms.
However, one point in the article seems like an anomaly. It says that
in South Africa, women who have sex only with their husbands are in
more danger than women who have many sex partners, because they can't
convince their husbands to use condoms. However, if women get AIDS at
the highest rate from their own husbands, it would seem that keeping
men from getting infected would also protect their wives.
Millions
Blocked from Voting in U.S. Election (through various kinds of dirty
tricks).
There are additional signs of election misconduct in Ohio,
but a Republican leader there says it is an "insult" to
raise the issue.
Paramilitary murderers, citing the name of President Uribe,
have made death threats against various union leaders in
the Coca Cola plant in Colombia. They have killed union
leaders before.
This is part of the reason for boycotting Coca Cola Company.
Behind the apparently fraudulent election in the Ukraine is a power
struggle between the US and Russia. The US and its proxies worked
hard to support the opposition candidate.
Melting arctic ice is driving polar bears to extinction, and there are
signs of changes in ocean currents and melting ice in Greenland that
could cause disaster to humanity too.
A marine in the Bush forces shot a prisoner,
which
triggered an investigation.
I'm glad that the marines investigate such crimes, but cases which can
be investigated are the tip of the iceberg. The same bitter
callousness that probably led this marine to murder a prisoner has
surely led many others to kill civilians, but only rarely is there
proof.
Ukrainians
took to the streets after a Bush-style election to
denounce fraud and reject the results.
Too bad Americans didn't.
A
writer projects that, if Sistani and Iraqi Shi'ites participate in
Bush's elections while Sunnis boycott them, this could lead to civil
war between the two groups.
Hollywood and the record companies are pushing a new bill
combining many attacks on Americans' freedom to use published works.
It's called the "Intellectual Property Protection Act, and the fact
that it uses the propaganda term "intellectual
property" shows it's likely to be bad.
Nader offered to
cooperate with the Kerry campaign in attacking Bush--but Kerry decided he'd
rather beat Nader instead.
Nader has called
on the chairman of the Democratic National Committee to resign.
Americans must
recognize the Bush forces are committing war crimes, and oppose their
actions.
Even soldiers have a duty to refuse to carry out illegal orders, such
as to commit war crimes. Civilians certainly should not support such
crimes. But any Americans who says he "supports" the "troops",
without qualifying the statement, is supporting the war crimes too.
However, I think that merely putting qualifications on this support
does not go far enough. The war itself is a crime (in Nuremberg,
German leaders were convicted of "crimes against the peace" for
launching wars of conquest). Bush's war of aggression does not
deserve any sort of support, only condemnation and opposition.
Global warming is destroying
several UNESCO World Heritage sites, and environmental campaigners are
trying to use this to pressure for measures to reduce global warming.
Amnesty International says Russia and China are selling arms to Sudan,
which uses them for
massacres.
India is considering satellite
tracking of sandalwood trees to prevent illegal logging.
This is one use of tracking technology I can support, because it only
tracks wrongdoers, not honest citizens.
Red Cross Estimates 800 Iraqi Civilians Killed in Fallujah.
I've read reports that the Bush forces dropped cluster bombs
in residential neighborhoods. People can't return there
or there will be more casualties.
Police in the Ukraine, speaking anonymously, say they were
ordered to fix the election.
Quebec police arrested protestors
en masse and violently.
The Bush forces took Falluja, and
present this as a victory,
but it
just shows the insurgents are following standard guerrilla principles:
melting away when attacked in strength.
The civilian casualties probably number in the thousands, but Bush
will not allow them to be counted, so there will only be unofficial
estimates that he can deny. The resistance will increase.
When Babar Ahmad tried to prosecute the UK police who had injured him
gravely while arresting him falsely, they
cooked up evidence to frame
him and send him to the US.
Avnery: As the Palestinian Authority moves toward elections, Sharon
needs to sabotage them,
without appearing to do so.
I hope that Avnery is right. However, it could be that Sharon can do
no wrong in Bush's eyes. Bush's crazed religious supporters want
Israel to build another temple, thinking this will trigger the
apocalypse.
An Indonesian human rights activist was
poisoned with arsenic on a flight.
Refugees from Fallujah are crowding into other cities and
cannot get
food and water. They talk of wounded dying in the streets.
43 Cuban performers have asked for asylum in the US,
after the Cuban government tried to make it
hard for them to perform in the US.
A US judge ruled
against military trials for Guantanamo prisoners, saying they should be
treated as POWs.
Reports of
fighting in Mosul and Ramadi, and atrocities
by the Bush forces in Fallujah--when they attacked the
hospital, they tied up and brutalized the doctors.
And worse.
The article also says that a photojournalist, escaping from Fallujah, saw the
Bush forces shooting anyone who tried to cross the river, including a family.
It sounds like the Serb snipers in Sarajevo.
A doctor from Fallujah talks about how the Bush forces
attacked his hospital, how patients and doctors were killed by bombs,
and how he saw many people die that he could do nothing to save.
The US House of Representatives
passed a bill to punish universities
if their faculty criticize Israel. (The bill is now in committee in
the Senate.)
The reasons why Nader ordered a recount in New Hampshire:
to investigate the cause of a suspicious
pattern in the results.
Confessions of an
economic hit-man.
The krill population near Antarctica has gone down 80% due to climate
change, which endangers the animals that eat krill: penguins, seals
and whales.
Barghouti to Run for Palestinian Leader
When the Smoke has Cleared Around Fallujah, What Horrors will Be Revealed?
The EU human rights commissioner
condemned the anti-terror laws of many countries, and in
particular the UK.
Islamic extremists are a real danger, particularly those who believe
nobody has a right to criticize Islam. (There is nothing so great
that people don't have a right to criticize it.) They threaten other
people's freedom--but they cannot do as much damage as our own
governments can do.
Just as the Bush forces have destroyed Fallujah in order to
save it, they are destroying our freedom in order to save it.
Here's what FDR had to say about corporate power:
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it
becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its
essence, is Fascism-- ownership of government by an individual, by a
group, or by any other controlling power."
The Presidential Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938, Item 59 Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies. April 29
Robert
Fisk on Arafat, the history of 90s peace negotiations, and how
Bush and Blair distort the situation so they can support Sharon.
Florida Republicans gave out false information about vote counts, and
tried to destroy records.
Nine US states are starting a
system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, similar to the Kyoto treaty.
Kerry won Ohio:
Just count the ballots at the back of the bus.
Ohio Voters Tell of
Election Day Troubles at Hearing. This document also says that the Green
Party has raised the funds for a recount in Ohio.
A recount could help correct for fraud in the counting process.
However, it cannot do anything to bring back the votes of the eligible
voters who were threatened and intimidated not to vote, or given false
information about where to vote, or who had to leave to work rather
than wait hours (because Democratic precincts were systematically
given too few voting machines). The resulting figures will still
overestimate Bush's real support.
Falluja is in
ruins after the Bush forces conquered it. Civilians are trapped in their
houses, afraid they will be shot if they emerge. But some resistance remains.
I suspect Bush meant this as a deliberate example, a threat to destroy
all of Iraq's cities. That's the sort of logic conquerors learn to
use.
An executive of Underwriters Laboratories, which certified the steel
used in building the WTC, says that the fire
could not have been the cause of their failure.
30 Israeli policemen invaded a church to arrest Mordechai Vanunu.
Marwan al-Barghuti plans to run for president of Palestine
while in an Israeli prison.
Russia stated it will not be the first country to
militarize space.
Perhaps this implicitly includes a threat to be the second, if the US
is the first. I hope it does some good.
Students are organizing in the US to fight unjust copyright laws.
However, either Pavlovsky or the article's author undermines this
campaign by saying they are not "advocating ripping off the
entertainment companies". (It is not clear whose words these are.)
The idea that sharing copies is equivalent to "ripping off" someone
is the central element in the publishers' propaganda campaign,
which is what enabled to pass their unjust copyright laws.
To prevent more such laws, we have to reject this notion.
Uri Avnery on the
death of Yasser Arafat.
In an interview,
Avnery explains how the US and Israel, by forcing
Arafat's secular Palestinian nationalism into defeat, left nowhere for
Arabs to turn except to the Islamist fundamentalism of bin Laden.
Congratulations, Dubya.
It looks like the Bush forces are
systematically attacking medical facilities in Fallujah.
They are also
keeping the Red Crescent doctors out of Falluja, where civilians are dying
because doctors cannot help them.
It makes sense. What's the use of bombing and capturing the hospitals
if other doctors can get in and treat the injured?
Republicans tried to intimidate voters in many places in Detroit. (Search for
"Detroit" in the
article to find that part.)
The people who did it appear to have been organized and taught an
approach that was often illegal. So I wonder who organized them.
A movement to
impeach Blair for lying about Iraq is getting started.
If it doesn't succeed in impeaching Blair, it may help prevent
him from winning in the next election, which I believe is due
in less than a year.
The Nader campaign has demanded a recount in
New Hampshire, while the Green and Libertarian candidates plan to
demand a recount in Ohio.
Even more
signs that voting in Ohio wasn't done right.
Other information about
election dishonesty, including examples of the bogus flyers that were used to
intimidate voters in some neighborhoods.
Cuba's medical system presents a superior model for how
to prevent the spread of AIDS.
I do not support the government of Cuba, which imprisons people
without trial for political opposition. However, the government of
the US can no longer claim to be better; it imprisons people without
trial for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and sometimes
tortures them.
Statistical
evidence of voting machine anomalies in Florida.
Ukrainians protest alleged election fraud.
They seem to take election fraud more seriously there.
Votergate 2004: We
Don't Need Paper to Prove Fraud.
Stan Goff reports
on his debate with a prominent neocon.
I disagree with Goff on one point: Bush is stealing Iraq's oil indirectly, by making Iraq pay billions in reparations (often to corporations) and privatizing its assets for his cronies. This theft may not be profitable for the US, given how much the continuing war costs, but it is profitable for Halliburton. It might have been a profitable conquest for the US also, if there had been no resistance, as Bush expected.
US Generals May Deliver Fallujah to Bush and Blair, but Not Fallujahns.
This article illustrates why it will be hard for nonviolent protest to
prevail against the Bush forces--they respond by shooting the
protestors. By the way, a similar shooting of protestors was the
trigger for the American Revolution. It was called the Boston
Massacre.
Bev Harris says TV stations have told their reporters not to talk
about voter fraud.
Witch Hunt at Columbia: a campaign backed by lots of money
is trying to intimidate professors, labeling criticism
of Israel as "anti-semitism".
Evidence of a Second Bush Coup?
An air attack on Falluja by the Bush forces completely destroyed a
hospital. No one knows how many sick or injured people were killed
there.
Is this what they mean by a "surgical strike"?
It Will
Be Months Before we Learn the Truth About Fallujah.
A Dutch filmmaker who criticized Islam's treatment of women was
murdered on the
street--reminding us that the Christian fanatics in
the US aren't the only dangerous ones.
Many US electronic voting machines were certified as secure by
an organization that
decided to skip the security testing.
More Evidence of Vote Rigging: Did Kerry Concede Too Soon?
Arundhati Roy supports the Iraqi resistance.
No patriotic Iraqi could tolerate or legitimize the conquest and
colonization of his country.
I think Roy's suggestion for nonviolent resistance may be unrealistic,
given the cruel practices of the Bush regime and its effective control
of US media. It may be a good to try it in parallel, but I would not
ask Iraqis to stop responding to bombs with bombs.
Blair plans to prohibit protests outside Parliament during daytime,
to get rid of an embarrassing war protestor.
Criticism can be unpleasant, but listening to protest is part of what
democracy mens. To adopt the principle that citizens have no right to
make their leaders feel uncomfortable is to establish tyranny. To ban
or remove protest on the excuse that a terrorist might be hiding among
protestors threatens democracy worse than any terrorist.
Bush plans to ignore treaties against weapons in space,
and is dragging the UK along.
If China and Russia make it clear that they will follow suit
unless the US agrees to arms control,
maybe Congress will recognize
how foolish this is.
Isn't it sad that we have to hope that those countries, neither of
them really democratic, will restrain US imperial designs.
Why Kerry Conceded Defeat despite Electoral Fraud
I'm glad I did not give way to the pressure to support a candidate who
was so far away from the principles of civil liberties, peace,
justice, and shared prosperity.
Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked
Massive Voter Suppression and Corruption in Ohio
Michael Ruppert's response
to the election.
Kerry won't challenge the election results, but reports are that Nader
is thinking about it, so send him a fax as described in the Urgent
Action note. Not with the idea that it would put Kerry in the White
House, but because election fraud calls for legal action.
Exit poll figures during election day changed in ways that were
mathematically impossible--proving that something fishy
was happening.
I am not sure that fiddling was the only possibility, but this
is something that the networks and their polling organizations
owe us an explanation for.
Fewer foreign students want to study at US universities, and the
universities are feeling the
decrease in applicants. The AAAS expressed their concerns.
The AAAS proposal is directed solely at reducing the practical
inconveniences of visa processing. Perhaps some foreign students are
concerned only about these superficial matters, but others disapprove
of US policies, are unwilling to be fingerprinted at the border, or
fear even worse treatment. They will continue to stay away.
Two days ago, in Germany, a university teacher told me he knows many
students who want to stay away from the US. After I encouraged him,
he launched a campaign for students to state publicly that they will
not go to the US.
The Choice between War
and More War.
(This cites evidence of voting machine malfunctions
in Ohio.)
What will it take
for Americans to reject the war on the world?
If the votes had all been counted in Ohio and New Mexico, Kerry would probably have won
the election.
In other words, Bush didn't win this time either; he cheated
again.
I did not support Kerry, because he was not different enough
to be worth it. However, this similarity does not excuse
a fraudulent election, nor make Bush a legitimate president.
There is evidence of possible
tampering using electronic voting machinesin a primary election in
Washinton State last September.
Brazil's government is trying to end a
long tradition of slavery in the rainforests.
The Bush forces
paid no attention to explosives in Al Qaqaa, just as they paid no attention
to the treasures of history in the national museum, or the papers in the Iraqi
ministries (except the oil ministry), or the archeological sites of Sumer.
A US court rebuked
Bush's continuing resistance to letting the Guantanamo prisoners meet their
lawyers.
The EU is researching a plan to put RFIDs into banknotes.
This could mean total government tracking of finances.
It might also enable thieves to count the money in your
wallet while it's still in your pocket.
It would not raise any particular issues if banknotes contained RFIDs
that only say "I am a real banknote". That would impede
counterfeiting without any harmful effects. The real problem happens
when they broadcast the bill's serial number, or hold memory of who
saw the bill previously. Then they become a tool for tyranny.
We need a convenient portable RFID-destroying appliance, that we can
use to fry the RFIDs that may be in various things that we use or own.
14 characteristics of fascist states:
how does your government stack up?
As a consequence of the Bush invasion, Iraqi scientists are working with insurgents to
develop chemical weapons.
The danger that Bush lied about is real because of his dishonesty.
It's poetic justice--too bad all the rest have to suffer too.
Sharon
persuaded parliament to vote for pullout of settlements
from Gaza.
Maybe he really intends to do it. But is this a step towards peace,
or just an excuse for annexation elsewhere?
Rumsfeld ignored warnings that
attacking Falluja would explode.
While it could be that he simply exercised bad judgment in this issue,
I think Bush set a tone for his men about ignoring news they don't
want to hear.
The Democratic party is
actively fighting Republican vote-suppression campaigns--including filing
lawsuits against untrustworthy electronic voting systems. If these suits
succeed, they could do some permanent good.
Uzbek opposition parties
praise the former UK Ambassador, who was just removed from the office. He
explained how Uzbek torturers manufactured confessions to manipulate Bush and
Blair, and apparently was punished for that.
Four Britons have sued
Rumsfeld and other US government officials for torturing them in
Guantanamo.
Many voters complained that touch-screen voting machines recorded
the wrong choice.
The Bush regime is trying to limit voters' rights to
sue to enforce voting rigts laws.
What else could have been bought with the $225 billion Bush spent on
trying to conquer Iraq?
The question is useful to consider, but it's not the primary question.
War is killing, and killing is wrong unless there is a very good
justification for it. This war is a war of aggression, and it would
be wrong if it didn't cost a dime.
Colin Powell is saying privately that the Iraqi resistance is
defeating the Bush forces.
I will be glad to see Bush lose a war of aggression,
even if the regime that takes power in Iraq is one I
would denounce as a dictatorship. Even Saddam Hussein
would be an improvement over the Bush forces' occupation.
A large US civil rights group confronted the Republican Party directly
about voter suppression.
By the time this is posted, perhaps people will know what actually
happened in the election.
I decided to stay away from the US until after election day in case
Bush did something violent to manipulate the election, or as an excuse
to cancel it--or in case Al Qa'ida did it because Bush is convenient
for them.
It looks like no such thing occurred. Bush chose fabricated smears
plus voter-suppression as the way to cheat, and Al Qa'ida choose to
give a hint of endorsing Kerry (unless it was the Bush people who made
that tape). I'm glad that my fears turned out to be wrong, but the
electin is nonetheless unfair.
Baghdad's main children's hospital says things are
worse than before
the Bush occupation. Disease is rampant, and there is not enough
medicine.
Day of the Dead:
The Haunting of the White House
In Burma, where the record "For the Lady" is banned,
the punishment
for playing it is 7 years in prison.
Thousands of Florida students were tricked into signing duplicate
voter registration forms that could
invalidate their real registrations.
A NYC firefighter says he helped the
FBI find three "black boxes" from the crashed airliners--boxes that the
FBI says were never found.
I would trust his word more than the FBI's word.
Israel and
the Palestinian olive harvest.
Brutal Trap
of Nepal's Civil War.
12 ways
Bush is trying to steal the vote in Ohio.
Michael Moore criticized repressive
copyright laws, saying he believes it is legitimate to share videos
nomcommercially, including his own Fahrenheit 9/11.
Bush whitewashes the
crimes of the dictatorship of Uzbekistan, to avoid the embarrassment of
being seen to support a dictator.
When the US government wants to destabilize a country, it says that
government doesn't respect human rights. When it wants to support a
dictatorship, it denies the dictator's crimes. They are both lies,
and they reflect a propensity to lie which can be compared with the
Soviet Union.
Kerry did this too in his "lesson for Latin-American democracy".
I wish I could believe he would be more honest if elected.
A nonviolent political activist in the UK faces losing her
home--as if being gravely injured by a policeman wasn't enough punishment
for participating in democracy.
Julian Bond, head of the NAACP, speaks about voter
suppression, in the past and today.
The NAACP is being investigated by
the IRS for posting a speech criticizing Bush policies.
Perhaps the NAACP should not have done this. However, ISTR that there
have been many churches which campaigned heavily for Republican
candidates, and the IRS has not been very eager to make them stop.
Bush wouldn't be the first Republican president to politicize the IRS.
Terror Alerts vs. Bush's poll numbers.
An election report from Florida, where early voting is already set up to be unfair.
Halliburton has a long series of
corrupt deals with the Cheney regime.
The Health Care Crisis in America--Clinton's historic surrender made it worse.
Arguing that the "bin Laden video" is a fraud; that is,
propaganda from the Bush regime.
That a communication from bin Laden would help Bush does not, in my
view, prove it is fake or that he made a mistake. Bush helps bin
Laden gain support, just as bin Laden helps Bush gain support; I don't
know whether Bush is smart enough to see this, but bin Laden surely
is.
However, some of the text as reported so far seems to be designed for
US domestic consumption. It makes no sense that bin Laden would
say such things.
There is a lot of talk about al-Zarqawi, but no evidence
connecting him to any of the things he is supposed to have done,
or even showing that he is still alive.
The UN condemns US policies of
mistreating prisoners.
The US Army disregarded regulations and its own officials to give
Halliburton a big contract extension. Now the FBI is
investigating what happened.
It may be hard to tie this corruption directly to Cheney,
but he is surely responsible for it.
100 prominent Americans and 40 relatives of 9/11 victims
now call for a thorough investigation of how the attacks took
place.
Bush is trying to help overseas military personnel vote,
while not helping civilians.
He thinks the military personnel will vote for him, but they may not.
He has a pattern of treating
them very badly.
This soldier reports that most of the troops he knows want
Bush out.
My absentee ballot has not come, so it appears I can't vote this
year. This web site will be my only contribution to the election.
Support the Simultaneous Policy.
I disagree with their pessimism about the prospects for one country to
resist corporate pressure. As Venezuela shows, sometimes countries can
do this; they only need leaders with spine. However, it can't do any
harm to push for simultaneous adoption of globally beneficial policies
in parallel with local adoption.
There is no doubt that FBI officials will lie when ordered to.
