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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
The White House is using nasty techniques (borrowed from commercial web sites) to track visitors.
100 journalists went on strike at the Beijing News, whose editor was removed by the government.
The Iraqi resistance has already proved that the neocons were wrong in their belief that they could terrorize a country into surrender through "shock and awe".
Here is a complete translation of the Süddeutsche Zeitung article that says that the Bush forces explicitly encouraged the looting of museums in Iraq?
President Carter's new book takes direct aim at Bush, saying that he is destroying American values.
The article mentions two other interesting books.
Iraqi Kurds are using the Bush forces as cover to prepare their forces to fight Iraqi Arabs.
This kind of strategy is not unusual. I seem to recall that Indonesians used the opportunity provided by the Japanese occupation in World War II to train an army. The Japanese thought this army was going to help them, but what its members had in mind was to fight for independence from the Dutch. I wish I had my copy of Sukarno's biography here to double-check that.
Cindy Sheehan is targeting closet Republicans such as Hilary Clinton for protests, as well as admitted Republicans.
The Bush forces are trying to export one of the features of American "democracy"--more and more people in prison.
Bush changed ICAN rules to give governments more power over top level domains. Kazakhstan has already used this to practice censorship.
The Last Stand of the American Republic.
The editor of the most daring Chinese newspaper has been fired. He tried to act as if he had freedom of the press.
One of the charges against Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has been dropped. Both charges are due to his having spoken about the mass murders of Armenians and Kurds.
This partial step is not enough to make Turkey a country that respects human rights. Turkey must reform its laws so that no one prosecuted for criticizing the state.
Global warming's effects are accelerating. Without the effects of disease-causing particulate pollution, it would already be even worse.
Australia privatized the "care" of refugees. The company is now in hot water for killing a baby.
This fits a standard pattern--companies say "We can do this better and cheaper than the state", but they make it no better, only more expensive. By now, this argument won't fool anyone, except those who want to be fooled. Alas, that usually includes the corporate-owned politicians and the corporate-owned media.
A Chinese government study reports that 80% of companies violate labor laws.
Meanwhile, the figure of almost 170 million Chinese unemployed shows how "free trade" treaties function in practice a low-wage treaties. Until all those 170 million get jobs, global wages are not likely to go up.
France is considering affirmative action to counter demonstrable ethnic prejudice in hiring.
The Bush forces say that the government of Iraq can't be trusted to run prisons because it might torture the prisoners.
Mr Bush, didn't you decide these activities are not torture when carried out on your behalf?
Three years ago we already learned that the NSA was doing illegal spying--on UN delegations.
You know that wealth and income are increasingly concentrated. Here's more information about how bad it is.
Bush is right: the US faces imminent danger. In fact, several imminent dangers--all from the same ultimate source.
The Bush regime is stonewalling congressmen asking for information about how Bush decided to attack Iraq.
The DEA continued its policy of maximum cruelty by raiding a San Francisco medical marijuana facility. (They ignored the nearby crack-houses.)
The Bush forces used white phosphorus shells to attack people, even though the US Army says this is illegal.
The Bush forces first denied using WP. Then they said that they used it for illumination, and it's irrelevant that people were in the target area. In Bush's War on Integrity, and anything can be described as anything else. His motto is, "What is truth?"
CIA kidnapers in Italy fell into the trap of cell phone surveillance.
Joost Lagendijk, member of the European Parliament, faces possible criminal charges in Turkey because he accused Turkish troops of provoking violence with Kurdish separatists.
I think the Turkish nationalists who are pushing for this must wish to prevent Turkey from joining the EU. The Turkish government may not like to see a complaint raised against someone who will play a role in the decision of whether to admit Turkey to the EU, but as long as they have censorship laws, it leaves itself wide open for this.
Reportedly Sharon will have surgery to repair a hole in his heart. Now we understand why he has been so callous and cruel: his humane concern for other people must have leaked out through the hole.
Perhaps the surgery will enhance the prospect for peace.
EU fishermen blocked a ban on North Sea cod fishing because it would cut their income. The WWF warns this the cod are on their way to being wiped out; don't the fisherment realize that will cut their income even more. They are simply too short-sighted to survive in this world.
And if our species continues wiping out its food supplies with such stupid decisions, it will prove we were all too short-sighted to survive.
Most of the EU countries are failing to carry out their obligations under the Kyoto treaty.
The Greek government participated in the abduction and torture of Pakistanis in Greece, along with the UK government.
Torture by governments is much more dangerous than the private terrorism they claim to be "protecting" us from.
The music factories are being investigated for price-fixing for downloading music.
No wonder they say they "lose" so much when people share--they gain the benefits of monopoly when people don't share.
Italy is considering murder charges against the Bush forces soldier who shot at Giuliana Sgrena and killed Nicola Calipari.
Following the usual practice of police, the Bush forces fabricated a story to excuse the shooting, but the Italian prosecutors don't accept it.
Republicans cut funds for student loans, and for welfare (but only the kind that's for poor people).
Here is more information on how poor people will pay the price so Bush could cut taxes for the rich.
This law was rushed through with little debate.
How FEMA threatens the US Constitution.
The Bush regime is already starting a plan to track the movements of all cars in the US.
The idea of charging more for road travel at busy times makes no sense. Drivers already face a considerable penalty for driving when the roads are crowded: it takes longer, and they use more gas, which costs more. If that doesn't make them change the time they travel, extra tolls won't do it either.
What we really want to encourage drivers to do is drive less, regardless of what time. The rational way to do that is by raising the gas tax, but that's exactly what Bush won't allow.
The Bush forces confirm that air attacks on Iraq have greatly increased.
One nasty thing that Islamic governments do is persecute anyone who was a Muslim and converts to anything else. Even Malaysia, which in most respects is not extremist, prohibits this. It is worse in countries such as Iran and Iraq.
In Iran, a celebrated Bahai prisoner of conscience died after 15 years in prison. Someone printed a false story that he had converted to Islam, but since in fact he was still a Bahai, the court took this excuse to pretend he had converted back. He was sentenced to death.
The Islamist climate of "liberated" Iraq puts Iraqi Christians in danger, including the danger they will be punished if any Muslims convert to Christianity.
Bush, who makes such a fuss about being Christian, probably doesn't want to talk about this; but if pressed to, he would probably say that God must have wanted this happen when telling Bush to invade Iraq.
Why not let April Glaspie tell what she really said to Saddam Hussein about whether the US would defend Kuwait?
An Iraqi student leader who organized a protest about election fraud was kidnaped and killed--apparently by a death squad.
Some of the Sunnis elected to the Iraqi parliament won't be allowed to serve, because they were associated in the past with the Ba'ath party.
If Iraq had really been liberated, as Bush likes to pretend, Iraqis would probably not generally vote for people who had played important Ba'ath party roles. They remember what the Ba'ath party did when it was in power; they can also see how much any individual participated in its wrongs. But they have a worse enemy to deal with now.
Sharon seems to be planning an air attack on Iran, timed to help his election campaign.
Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid says that the Indonesian police and intelligence are behind the terrorist bombings in Indonesia, that the supposed Islamic extremist groups such as Jemaah Islamiah have been infiltrated by provocateurs. And there's other evidence to back it up.
The US army tried to order, and intimidate, Bush forces soldiers' families to close their private web site, or give the army control of it.
Palestinians are regularly punished by Israel simply for being related to Palestinians who were killed by Israelis--on the grounds that this makes them more likely to want to retaliate.
The writer has made a clever connection, because this shows that the Israeli government recognizes--when it suits them to do so--that its policies of violence towards Palestinians create more potential terrorists to retaliate.
Tali Fahima accepted a plea bargain, pleading guilty to a series of minor crimes.
Tali Fahima, an Israeli woman, was accused of collaborating with militants, but it appears all she really did was escort Palestinian children to school. (That's not an easy job in occupied Palestine.)
The government's willingness to bargain supports the idea that the accusations were false, but outcome was a victory for the government anyway. It has succeeded in terrorizing Israelis who might wish to associate with Palestinians, and without even having to present any evidence against one.
Israeli settlers have build dozens of illegal "outposts" on Palestinian land; the army does not remove them, because secretly the Israeli government supports them. So the nonviolent protestors of Bil'in built one outpost on their own land. The army removed it.
This serves to demonstrate the baldfaced dishonesty of the government's application of its own laws.
After the caravan outpost was destroyed, the villagers put up a new outpost: a tent. An Arab and an Israeli were arrested and beaten while handcuffed; the Arab was severely injured and is now in the hospital.
Abu Baker Mansha in the UK was convicted of thoughtcrime, based on evidence suggesting he might have been contemplating killing someone.
If left alone, he might eventually have committed murder. Or he might have done nothing. To imprison people for things they might have done, for things they may have considered doing, is obviously unjust. In typical Blair style, it has been done by writing the law to define suspicious circumstances as the crime. Such a law is a far greater threat to society than a lone man with a gun.
Ethiopea has charged journalists and antipoverty activists with treason alongside opposition politicians. They face execution.
Although the government's actions are outrageous, a part of its criticisms of the opposition may be true. It is not implausible that the US was trying to fund a mass campaign to drive the government from power; this occurred in the Ukraine and in Georgia, for instance. However, that would not excuse the government from (apparently) rigging elections in the first place.
The Israeli annexation wall has made Bethlehem an "immense prison".
Are the Bush forces disguising uranium poisoning as leishmaniasis?
The meaning of Iraqi sovereignty was demonstrated as the Bush forces depopulated a village near Fallujah. They said the village was too near their base, so they made all the inhabitants homeless.
It's clear how these troops think about the Iraqis they are supposedly helping to "liberate".
There are many reasons for impeaching Bush and Cheney, based on the fundamental ideas embodied in the US Constitution.
Cindy Sheehan writes about the mothers of other men killed by the Bush invasion of Iraq. Some of those men were soldiers in the Bush forces; one was a Spanish journalist; one was in the same battle as Casey Sheehan, but on the other side.
Iraq: Vote Early and Vote Often.
Many Iraqis don't like that policy.
The UK plans to record the movements of all cars, using computers attached to TV cameras.
Blair's aim, as we have seen for a long time, total surveillance of everyone. This system is only partial surveillance; it may catch some thieves, but they will surely discover holes in it and learn to exploit them. It will work better with dissidents.
A bill proposed in the US Congress would require analog digital and video recorders to recognize special "watermarks" and refuse to record.
The movie companies have been attacking our freedom persistently for a decade--they are no friends of ours. However, for many people the idea of a total boycott of Hollywood seems unthinkable. So I have an alternate proposal: never pay to see a movie unless you have specific reason to believe it is a good one.
This is not an absolute boycott of Hollywood, but in practice it comes pretty close.
The opposition presidential candidate in Egypt has been sentenced to prison for forgery of signatures to register the party. Supporters protested inside and outside the courtroom--apparently the party has plenty of real support, which makes the accusation implausible.
The US has propped up Mubarak as a dictator for decades with lots of money. The current US criticism of Mubarak would be the right thing to say if the US were not still keeping him in power at the same time. The main opposition to Mubarak comes from the Muslim Brotherhood, which is islamist though not as radical as islamists in some other countries.
The Bush forces arrested the Iraqi minister of the interior, whose ministry ran various torture prisons and runs the death squads.
The article is right that this demonstrates that the "sovereignty" of the new Iraqi government is a sham--if we didn't already know.
This does not mean it was wrong to arrest him. I entirely support the arrest of Bush regime officials who preside over torture and death squads in Iraq. But if this policy is to be meaningful, it must not be limited to the low-level officials who are Iraqi. Their American higher-ups such as Bush and Cheney must be arrested too.
Bush forces soldiers say Bush underestimates their capabilities when he claims they cannot leave Iraq quickly.
Bush is hoping that reducing the number of occupying ground troops in Iraq will reduce non-Iraqi casualties--and that Americans won't know or care about the Iraqis killed by Bush forces bombers.
Dirty Uranium in Iraq is coming back to haunt the US.
I prefer to call it "Dirty Uranium" rather than "Depleted Uranium", because bombs that spread radioactive dust are called "dirty bombs" in all other cases.
Calls to impeach Bush are spreading to the edges of the mainstream.
The Bush regime's searches without search warrants go even further than previously thought.
The IMF gave the Iraqi puppet government a big loan.
Since the IMF operates mainly under the control of the US, there is surely more to this than is described in that story. I might just be a matter of distributing or delaying the costs of the occupation with its death squads. But it could be more. IMF loans usually have conditions, and which are usually nice for foreign investors and nasty for the populace. I wonder what the conditions of these loans are.
The NSA has been spying on all international phone calls.
Berlusconi defends fascism--and torture.
When Palestinians fire rockets from Gaza, Israel plans to respond by firing artillery...at civilian areas.
Until now, Israeli bombings of Palestinian civilian areas have been given the excuse that some Palestinian military leader was in the vicinity. Now that is dispensable.
As for the other proposal, to cut electricity for all of Gaza, here's what Human Rights Watch has to say:
See also here.
A Chinese reporter faces charges of "revealing state secrets" for telling the New York Times that Jiang Zemin was going to retire from one of his offices.
When the Bushmen call for prosecution of people who tell the public about their crimes, they're taking lessons from China.
French MPs Vote to Legalise Internet File-Sharing
Opinion polls in Israel show that half the population favor sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians.
This would help make it possible to negotiate a peace deal, if Israeli leaders wished to negotiate a peace deal. Paradoxically Sharon remains popular, and his goal is ethnic cleansing.
The Bush forces released 8 Iraqi prisoners, formerly labeled as "high value", admitting they are "no threat".
The Bush forces did not explain why they previously had a different view of these people, or acknowledge that the previous view is mistaken. This suggests that these changing labels reflect nothing more than what the Bush forces want to do with a captive--not evidence or facts.
UK police are now investigating possible UK involvement in CIA torture flights.
Bliar recently refused to carry out an investigation of this, saying it would "add fuel" to people's concern about the matter. He thinks people should take his word!
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are spreading. We have squandered the benefit of antibiotics by using them carelessly.
Wal-Mart was fined in California for denying workers lunch breaks.
Europe-wide arrest warrants are out for CIA kidnapers.
The families of four Bush forces mercenaries killed in Falluja in 2004 are suing the contractor, saying that it sent them on a mission without adequate numbers or weapons.
I am not unhappy that the Iraqis killed these unofficial soldiers (who might be called "illegal combatants" in Bush regime terminology).
A proposal for peacefully avoiding Iranian development of nuclear weapons.
The long term issue is the US rogue-state attitude towards use of nuclear weapons, which predates Bush. This encourages other countries to regard nuclear nonproliferation as just another name for US bullying.
Just how bad is the deal that was made at Hong Kong?
In the UK, the copyright police demand royalties for playing an instrument before you buy it.
The copyright bullies know only one emotion, greed, and recognize no limits to their intrusion on people's lives.
The Bush regime asked Turkey to support war against Iran or Syria. (Turkey refused to cooperate with the conquest of Iraq.)
British agents kidnaped and tortured Pakistanis in Greece, then released them with threats to hurt their families if they told anyone what had happened.
Microsoft faces fines of over 2 million dollars per day unless it carries out the EU's order to provide certain interface specs. True to form, Microsoft has pretended to comply, but the specs it offered were woefully incomplete.
Microsoft says this order violates its "intellectual property rights". Microsoft uses that term to create the false impression of a basic principle that never existed. In general, anyone who uses the term "intellectual property" is either trying to confuse you, or confused himself. In this case, we can be confident it is the former.
The US senate compromised to extend the U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. act for 6 months, in effect making more time to discuss what to do.
This comes after a filibuster blocked the full extension that Bush wanted.
Democracy campaigners in Hong Kong blocked to plans to change the constitution of the territory, plans which did not lead to democracy.
Chris Hogg seems to be trying to excuse China for denying democracy to anyone who won't necessarily be subservient in applying it.
An amendment to the military spending bill will require the Bush forces to try to count civilian casualties.
I suppose they will undercount, but nonetheless it may help embarrass them.
What the Laws of War say about the Bush forces' conduct in Iraq. For instance, changing the constitution of Iraq is a war crime, and everything that the Bush-installed puppet government does is the Bush forces' responsibility.
The ease of rigging elections on Diebold machines has forced even Governor Bush to recognize the problem.
More information on how the insecurity was demonstrated.
The voting machine company's own "repair" personnel have easy access to the machines; in fact, there's testimony that someone from the manufacturer visited election machines in Ohio just before and after the 2004 election. Thus, direct personal access to any part of the system is not an unreasonable condition in testing the machines for fraudworthiness.
I know of only two safe ways to do the election:
* Voter-verified paper ballots.
* Hard-wired machines that cannot be altered without visibly breaking them. (This is done in India.)
More about Clint Curtis, who testifies he was hired to design a program for election rigging by a man, Feeney, who was since elected to congress.
Various Iraqis have accused militias of coersing voters.
These militias surely include the Badr brigades, connected with Iran, whose members are a large part of the Iraqi police.
Of course, Allawi with his ties to the US and the suspicion of stealing lots of money might not have got many votes even without coercion.
The parties that didn't do well are threatening to boycott the Parliament.
One of the judges on the secret FISA court, which exists to approve wiretaps, has resigned because Bush made a mockery of that court's job.
Media Lens documents how much even the most liberal of newspapers is compelled to uphold the business agenda even while sometimes criticizing it. It documents the pattern of the "engineering of consent".
Since Israel allows settlers to build and expand illegal "outposts" on Palestinian land, without hindrance, now the Palestinians of Bil'in have built an outpost on their own land.
The German government let an Uzbek government torturer enter, and leave again, disregarding the lawsuit filed by his victims.
Representative Conyers has introduced resolutions to censure Bush and Cheney for causes such as launching a war based on lies, torture, and harassment of political opposition.
In Iraq, even if the Bush forces are nowhere around, you're still not safe from them. Here are more details about the aerial bombardment of Iraq.
The Bush forces are not content will torturing and mistreating Iraqis. They lured men from India to work for them in virtual slave conditions, and in danger--and tortured them when they complained.
Iraq's Election Result: a Divided Nation.
Why did Bush order the NSA to spy on Americans when using the FISA procedure is so easy? Perhaps it's so he can spy on political opposition.
Dead soldiers' families' court case for an inquiry into why the UK joined the Bush forces has been rejected.
Republicans tried to sell off public land to mining companies, to help close the deficit caused by their tax cuts.
Censorship in Turkey is really rolling; 60 authors and reporters have been tried. Now a publisher is on trial for a minor side remark in a translated book.
Israel distrupted the Palestinian elections, forbidding residents of East Jerusalem from voting, because it doesn't like the prospects for who might win.
I suspect that "East Jerusalem" really includes various adjoining areas that Israel plans to annex to East Jerusalem.
More than one person has written to inform me about "typos" in the name of Tony Bliar. These inconsistencies are not accidental. Sometimes I use the old spelling, "Blair", which is still used by most news reports. Sometimes I use the more accurate spelling, "Bliar", which indicates the man's dishonesty.
A doctor from Falluja is in Brussels testifying about how the Bush forces destroyed the city. His testimony is here.
Thai police arrested Chinese refugees who were peacefully protesting in front of the Chinese embassy. The protest was directed at rape and murder of prisoners by Chinese police.
Since fines of a million dollars a day failed to scare the Transport Workers Union, the Night-Mayor of New York calls them "cowardly".
Colin Powell says European governments knew about CIA "rendition" of suspects.
Powell disingenuously does not distinguish between those "renditions" which transported people to stand trial and those that transported them for torture--so the statement means less than it appears to. Europeans surely knew about the former. If they knew about the latter, they should be prosecuted for it. And from now on they must make it their business to know the difference.
The mass media stand ready to label great thinkiers as incompetents and fools, the moment they start to criticize the crimes of those in power.
In a society whose mass media follow the tyrant to support torture, wars of aggression, and imprisonment without trial, most people will support them--so anyone who doesn't follow along is automatically an "extremist".
Bush defends illegal NSA spying on Americans' phone calls.
When he calls this a "tough decision", that's yet another layer of lie. For Bush, deciding to set aside human rights is not tough--it's a pleasure.
The NSA's illegal spying on Americans helped convince the Senate to block extension of some parts of the U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. act. Alas, the democrats who sat on this spying issue give us little to hope for.
I can envision how the Bush forces could be driven out of Iraq by a combination of Iraqi resistance and American opposition. I don't know whether it will happen, but I can see how it might. But I can't see how we can free the US from the callous rich tyrants that rule it.
Tony Benn, for 50 years a UK Labor MP, sees more hope.
The Pentagon is already spying on protest groups and calling them "threats", but this is not enough for Bush. He wants to extend this to various sorts of "threats", meaning political activities.
The Turkish government is starting to take steps to end "honor killings", in which women are punished by their families for having been raped.
I understand the emotions that make some people support the death penalty. All I have to do is imagine the perpetrators of an "honor killing", and I feel like tearing them apart. But I will be a better person if I do not let those feelings run away with me; so I do not endorse the killing of prisoners. Life imprisonment is enough punishment to deter such crimes, if it is applied. The main challenge, for ending "honor killings", is to convict the killers at all.
A federal court ruled that "intelligent design" is just religious creationism in disguise, and that it cannot be taught as biology.
Extinction alert for 800 species--and how to prevent it.
Many US businesses are sure that whoever comes after Bush will institute CO2 emission limits.
More about Evo Morales' victory.
The New York City Transit Authority wants to cut health care for its employees despite its billion-dollar surplus. So they are on strike.
Progress in gel batteries could result in RFIDs readable from 300 feet. If one of them is inserted in something you carry, you could be scanned from a block away! Total monitoring of everyone's movements could be a reality.
Won't Bush be happy.
The reason why Bush persists in his lies, no matter how they are exposed, is that he expects to get away with them. With the media often supporting the lies, it often works.
Venezuela is close to completing the process of raising taxes that foreign oil companies pay. Exxon is holding out, but soon it will lose its leases entirely.
Evo Morales may start Bolivia moving forward on this process.
With all the dishonesty of the people who work for Bush, this one takes the cake. Even as political posturing, it is absurd.
The US has gone well beyond mere meddling in Colombia. Plan Colombia gives the government of Colombia detailed year-by-year instructions to follow. President Uribe, who accepted this, in effect reports to Bush.
Uri Avnery: Sharon, the pied piper.
Evo Morales won the Bolivian election in the first round.
The WTO has taken another step to promote corporate globalization. Poor countries seem to have gained small and remote concessions for their agricultural exports, in exchange for major concessions to the manufacturing megacorporations.
This is not final, so there is still a chance for these whole round of talks to go into the trash where it belongs.
The main opposition leader in Uganda got on the ballot for president even though he faces charges of treason and terrorism.
Labeling the political opposition as "terrorist" is fashionable all around the world.
Du Pont believes its secrecy is more important than New Jersey residents' health.
Two girls for every boy! But it's not Surf City, and it's caused by chemical pollution--which causes various diseases too.
The Bush regime is holding young children prisoner in places such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
A split in Fatah could reshape the future of Palestine's dealings with Israel.
More information about the student who tried to borrow the Quotations of Chairman Mao--and the chilling effect that this surveillance already has.
Rumsfeld says that the McCain amendment has no affect on the US military since their policy has always been not to torture anyone.
Previous notes show this is a lie.
A catalog of false statements made by Bush regime leaders about Iraq.
Are the disasters caused by Bush policies mistakes, unforseen consequences? What if they were intended?
Moving production to poor countries often increases CO2 emissions.
Katherine Jashinski refused to go to Iraq to fight for the Bush forces. She would rather face imprisonment than kill Iraqi civilians.
Here is her statement, posted by Courage to Resist.
See also www.CouragetoResist.org.
Human Rights Watch calls for trial of Sudan's leaders for war crimes. Their air force provides air support to militias that kill civilians.
Sudan does not investigate its officials for complicity in this, yet objects to trying them outside the country, such as in the ICC. Does this remind you of another, more powerful rogue state?
The US media are supporting Bush's pretense that he personally can authorize the government to violate laws against domestic surveillance.
Members of Congress, and the New York Times, knew that the NSA was breaking the law by spying on Americans, but they did nothing for a whole year.
The idea of destroying the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches sounds like an absurd fantasy--wouldn't the police notice it? But even if Bush isn't lying about this, they could surely have got the attorney general to sign off on an emergency wiretap. So this is no excuse for trampling people's rights.
Al-Habashi says UK intelligence agents interrogated him in Pakistan, then gave him to the CIA to be taken to Guantanamo. The UK government just confirmed the first part.
The US tortured people in a secret prison in Afghanistan last year.
Israeli anarchists continue to join Palestinians in the nonviolent protests against robbing the lands of Bil'in.
Some Isrealis recognize that killing Palestinians reliably provokes retaliation. Ironically, an Israeli woman was killed by such retaliation immediately after predicting that it would come.
It's only the country's leaders that pretend to be too stupid to recognize this pattern.
An Israeli general suggested troops ought to be shot if they are morally reluctant to carry out illegal orders.
Microsoft is developing a product that lets you keep track of other people's whereabouts through their cell phones--as the police already do.
This is another reason not to carry a cell phone.
Governor Schwarzenegger rejected Tookie Williams' appeal for clemency; Williams was then executed. Part of the reason Schwarzenegger cited was that Williams said he did not commit the murders he was convicted of.
I know little of the details of that case, but DNA evidence has shown that a substantial fraction of convicted murderers in the US are Innocent. And those who refuse to confess to the crimes they did not commit may be killed for their honesty.
The US "terrorist" watchlist for airlines has 80,000 names.
How the US deals with democracy in Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, and Iraq.
With Evo Morales, running for president of Bolivia.
His policies are rather mild opposition to the empire, and if I were a Bolivian, I would campaign for stronger opposition to global business' power.
The Iraqi resistance nonetheless saw enough value in the elections to urge Iraqis to vote--which is why there were no attacks on voters.
Bush-league sham democracy is not much good in itself, but it can do some good for Iraq if it leads Iraqis to demand the real thing. Real democracy in Iraq would mean that Iraqis, not Bushmen, decide what to do with Iraq's oil and its economy. To achieve this, they will need to kick the Bush forces out of power.
This may involve a political struggle, not necessarily only a military one. It would be most useful for some Iraqis to visit Bolivia, and study how the people drove out two presidents that were agents for global business. People who speak Spanish and Arabic might be needed to help as interpreters.
The McCain anti-torture amendment was destroyed by a compromise which added a loophole that the media have hardly noticed. The loophole doesn't look big, but it can be stretched by the CIA as far as they want to go.
A BBC video shows prison guards in Texas torturing helpless prisoners.
Information from Sibel Edmonds suggests a link between Plamegate and some neocons' involvement in a plot to help Turkey get nuclear weapons.
This connection is not proven; part of the reason we cannot tell whether it is true is that the Bush regime prevents Edmonds from telling us what she knows. However, there is no doubt that Bush is the enemy of the Constitution he is supposed to defend. When the rulers are traitors, patriotism can mean going into exile. Perhaps the best thing Sibel Edmonds could do for her adopted country is to flee to where its leaders cannot stop her from telling its people what she knows of the plots against it.
Homeland Security agents visited a U. Mass. student because he borrowed the Quotations of Chairman Mao through inter-library loan.
This one example would prove that surveillance and political intimidation goes far beyond what could be justified or legitimate in a free society. It also suggests a way to spam them: borrow the Little Red Book through inter-library loan! Then they will either have to waste lots of time, or pull back from doing what they shouldn't be doing anyway.
Bridgestone has been sued for treating its workers in Liberia like slaves. It does not officially hire children, but fathers must drag their children along to fill the quota.
The European Union is supporting extremist privatization demands in the WTO talks.
I hope that these talks fail completely, because the WTO will not approve anything unless it does more harm than good.
Opponents of Syria continue being killed in Lebanon, and Robert Fisk is convinced that Syrians are doing it.
Argentina will follow Brazil in paying off its IMF debt early. This plan is causing controversy in Argentina.
The IMF has a tendency to impose cruel policies on debtor nations. Paying off the debt could be a good thing, if it is followed by tearing up those cruel policies and telling Bush and the IMF to go stuff it. But will that occur?
Various Bush regime policies have had unintended consequences. Here is a partial list.
The Ethiopean government charged opposition with leaders treason, after they protested against alleged vote-rigging.
I wonder how long it will take Bush to do this.
Activists in Hong Kong are being systematically harrassed. This reminds me of what Clinton did to a mass protest against a meeting in Washington: their headquarters was condemned for fire code violations a couple of days before the protest.
It is important to recognize how police stretch and abuse whatever power they are given, so we can judge the likely effects of proposal to give them more power.
How the rationalists of India visit towns to expose the fraudulent magic powers of the religious gurus.
The challenges Evo Morales will face if he becomes president of Bolivia.
The police in Peru arrested one of the leaders of last year's massive protests against the US-imposed war on drugs.
Torture degrades us all -- regulating torture makes as much sense as regulating terrorism, rape or murder.
Camilo Mej?a spent a year in prison for refusing to serve in the Bush forces in Iraq. Now he teaches high school students to see through military recruiting, which often lies to its targets.
A Bush forces officer has been arrested for embezzling around $100,000.
She should have taken hundreds of millions, like Halliburton; then she'd be safe.
The Israeli army shot 13 UN workers in Jenin, across 4 years. One was British, and a British inquest ruled this an unjustified killing.
Whether that will have any effect is not clear.
The so-called terrorist suspects that Bliar has hounded for years are supposedly planning some sort of crime. But the UK police have never even bothered to question them.
Recently we saw that the Pentagon is spying on protest groups, calling them "threats". Bush wants a law to expand this operation, in order to prevent security threats. Now we don't have to guess what kinds of threats he means.
The NSA also spies on Americans now.
The Bush regime has many ways of stirring up fear of terrorism. One of them is "agroterrorism", the idea that we need to fear terrorists who would put poison in our food as it is grown.
As this article explains, the US agriculture system does so much of this that terrorists could hardly make it worse if they tried.
The government of Zimbabwe arrested journalists working for an independent radio broadcaster (which broadcasts from outside Zimbabwe).
Bliar's officials denials that CIA torture flights stopped in the UK are meeting mistrust in Parliament.
This is what happens to habitual liars: people learn to distrust whatever they say.
The top 14 corporate evildoers.
The Blair regime wants to deport a woman who escaped from political violence in the Congo.
Their position is, being attacked just once for political reasons isn't enough to prove you are the target of political violence. Perhaps they insist that you be attacked fatally before they believe it.
UK citizen al-Habashi says the UK handed him to the US for torture in Morocco. He is now in Guantanamo facing a military kangaroo court.
For Bush, the crucial effect of the Iraqi election is that it will provide a "sovereign" government to approve the transfer of Iraq's wealth into the hands of the corporations he works for.
Bush hopes that he can use air power to keep this corporation and its puppet government in power. But if Iraqis want freedom, they will fight on until their country is free of these Bush-imposed chains.
Schwarzenegger's denial of clemency to Tookie Williams was indirectly a way of demonizing other famous prisoners who also maintain or maintained their innocence, and of covering up the doubts about the evidence that convicted him.
The courts protect the rights of the wealthy suspect, sometimes too much, but they often trample the rights of the pariah. In recent years, that notably includes Muslims, which is why Muslims can be convicted of planning terrorism based on evidence that rationally only provides grounds to begin to suspect them. But it has included young Black men for decades--especially those who are political, as were some of the men Williams was killed for admiring, even though Williams himself was not.
Thus, convicts innocent of the charges against them are not rare. We can't necessarily tell which ones they are, but we know they are there.
While convicts remain alive in prison, their friends have a strong incentive to look for evidence of their innocence, and official notice must be taken of it. When convicts are shown to be innocent, that embarrasses the authorities. The authorities know they can prevent such embarrassment by killing their mistakes.
The Pentagon, unashamed of exposure of its corruption of Iraqi journalism, plans to do even more, world-wide.
In the US, allowing near-monopoly ISPs to control how their customers use the Internet could destroy the Internet as we know it.
A Swiss official found credible evidence of secret CIA prisons and torture flights in Europe--and demands information from European governments.
A former Bush advisor publicly defends torturing suspects.
The artificial case this speaker uses to justify torture belongs to a class of misleading thought experiments which are unrealistic because of the certainties they assume.
Suppose you ask whether it is justified to shoot a suicide bomber without warning. What if your suicide bomber is just an electrician on his way to an appointment? It has happened. Suppose you ask whether to torture a terrorist to find out the plans. What if he is not a terrorist? It has happened. What if he is a terrorist, but he tells you a fake story that will lead you astray? It has happened. The people who want to shoot without warning, who want to torture, propose artificial scenarios constructed to provide unreal justifications. In reality, you don't know the odds well enough to calculate them.
In real life, no matter what evil you're trying to prevent, you can always find a method so evil that stopping you becomes the principal problem.
If the US is going to do torture, who should the torturers be? Here's one idea: invite the public to bid for torture opportunities.
The European Parliament approved a massive surveillance program intended to record who communicates with whom--and the movements, moment by moment, of every mobile phone. There is very little control over how the data can be used.
Cuba has blocked a group of women dissidents, known as the Ladies in White, from going to Europe to receive an award for their support for human rights. They carry out regular protests about the arrest of their relatives who are political prisoners.
The Pentagon is spying on dissident groups, and calls peaceful protests "threats".
Perhaps they're right. Democracy really is a threat--to tyrants.
There was a large conference in London of opposition to the Iraq war, and it plans large protests on the anniversary of the first attack.
The Badr brigades, whose members seem to populate the Iraqi police death squads, admits it is funded by Iran.
It also threatens openly to massacre attack the supporters of political candidates it doesn't like.
However, it is correct in saying that the other political actors in Iraq are equally corrupt--which includes Allawi and the Bush forces. The soldiers of the Bush forces are not getting rich, but their leaders, such as Bush and Cheney, are corrupt in their motives to send them to kill and die.
Can the various movements for peace and justice unite to hold the Bush regime officials responsible for the many war crimes they have ordered?
Four Dalit women were beaten up after they defied the prohibition on entering a temple in India.
I cannot regard the worship of this deity, or any other, as a cause worth getting beat up for. But that does not reduce the wrong committed by those who did the beating, nor the injustice of the caste system.
China has arrested the police commander who gave the order to shoot protestors.
Another Lebanese opponent of Syria was assassinated.
The US government gave several stories about what the FAA and NORAD did on Sep 11, 2001, and they add up to reasons to disbelieve them.
the Lancet magazine used scientific statistics to estimate 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. Here's what they did, and how war supporters have tried to discredit or suppress the result.
The US House of representatives voted more than 2 to 1 in favor of McCain's ban on torture. This would be enough to override Bush's veto.
To make this ban effective, it is necessary to make sure that all prisoners held by the US and its agents and subcontractors have the opportunity to go to court if they are tortured.
The European Parliament voted to investigate CIA torture flights.
One architect's confession blew the lid off a failure to effectively enforce Tokyo's building codes for earthquake safety. No one knows how many buildings in Tokyo were improperly built.
As Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk goes on trial for acknowledging genocide, the real defendent is Turkey.
Iraq after 1000 days of occupation.
During the destruction of Falluja, the al Jazeera camera team was
repeatedly attacked by Bush forces jets, which used their transmitter
to find them.
The CIA does not hesitate to contradict its chief's public statements, when in court protecting itself from investigation into its torture practices.
The US gun companies are
pretending that they will all go out of
business unless Congress gives them immunity.
The
Bush forces operate a "press club" in Iraq, paying reporters to
place stories.
How the CIA paid to set up Judith Miller's stories--and its
tradition of paying journalists goes back to 1950.
The Iraqi parliament election is structured so as to
underrepresent Sunnis.
The Bush forces
found another torture center in Baghdad,
with over 600 malnourished prisoners.
An Iraqi general fled to Jordan and talks about the torture
he has seen under Bush rule.
Was he a general under Saddam Hussein, or also under the Bush forces?
The story seems to suggets the latter, but I'm not certain.
Does someone know?
The French government told the CIA that the Niger uranium
documents were false--a year before Bush cited them as an
excuse for war.
In Mosul, under curfew, with the city cut in half by checkpoints,
the clinics find it hard to open for more than a few hours a day.
The European Commission
cut back a proposed directive
to register industrial chemicals and test their health effects.
A new Ohio law protects future election fraud.
Chavez' supporters
speak of changing Venezuela's constitution so he
can (or will?) remain president for additional years.
I hope they think twice about this. It would be a bad thing to do.
The government of East Timor has suppressed the report of its
own Truth and Reconciliation Commission under pressure from
Indonesia and the US.
Such cowardice can lead to comfort in the short term,
but in the long run it never leads to anything good.
Egypt:
A test of democratic rhetoric versus political Islam.
I propose that the West, rather than fighting against political Islam,
should try to divert it slightly towards more respect for human rights.
Israel's dangerous
nuclear hypocrisy.
The U.S. is threatening to delay the U.N. budget
as a bludgeon for reforms that many countries oppose.
The US air marshalls who shot a man in Miami airport said he made a
bomb threat.
The other passengers say that's not true. The air
marshalls must be taking lessons from cops, whose standard practice
is to lie about the people they have killed.
I'm staying at a place where NPR is on the radio, and I heard this
report first there. Although I had no independent knowledge of the
events, it seemed to me that the news report was too credulous; it
accepted the official story without doubts. That's what the US media
generally do. So I wonder if NPR reported the contrary evidence. I
suspect if NPR did not report this, but I wish I knew for certain.
Police in the US use cell phones to track people's movements, real
time. They can collect records of your past movements without meeting
even the usual standard for a search warrant. Now courts are considering
whether they must meet that standard for real-time tracking.
This is why I do not have a cell phone: I don't want to give the
police a record of everywhere I go. It's not that I have something
specific to hide; rather, it's my duty as a citizen to resist the
total surveillance state.
Legalized prostitution in Germany
allows honest brothels to keep
down pimps and the slave trade (which thrive where prostitution
is illegal).
Greenpeace says that the Montreal conference strengthened
the Kyoto treaty and its future, but showing the US as isolated.
A deal was reached on a fund to invest in
emissions reduction.
Businesses are increasingly recognizing what Bush will not, and
planning to curb CO2 emission.
The Bush regime tried to cancel Clinton's speech at the conference, by
pretending there was a chance it would sign a meaningful treaty if
Clinton did not speak.
Of course, this was a trick--there was never any chance, so Bush's
threat amounted to nothing. He was dangling an absurd false hope.
What shocks me is that Clinton almost fell for the trick.
Despite losing some support, Bush has not abandoned trying to doom the
world to disaster. Merely isolating the Bush regime is not enough.
What the world must do for survival is to slap Bush in the face--day
after day after day.
The unofficial war crimes indictment of Bush, Blair, and others.
In 2002 there was already plenty of reason to be skeptical of the Bush
claims about Iraq. In fact, some of the justifications given for the
first Gulf War were proved false.
The Israeli right wing has used its oppressive occupation of Palestine
as cover to destroy the welfare state, spreading poverty among
Israelis. Peretz, the new Labor Party leader, is running on a
platform of reversing that.
Sharon's campaign consists of killing Palestinian leaders, so as to
provoke terrorist attacks in response, which he can then use to
show how strong he is.
Villagers in Dongzhou, China, protested plans to construct a
coal-fired power plant whose pollution could kill them.
The police
shot and killed dozens of them.
You know Bush is in trouble when even an establishment organ such as
the New York Times criticizes his torture policy.
Afghanistan: 2 Years In Jail For Criticising Islam
The Afghan government should be required to respect human rights,
such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, if it is
to continue to receive western support.
The UK law lords (equivalent of the US Supreme Court) has
ruled out
use of evidence obtained by torture.
Unlike statements by Bush and his henchmen, which really amount to
"We don't admit it is torture". this decision is likely to actually
be obeyed by courts in the UK.
Drug prohibition raises the question of the individual's
cognitive liberty.
I am not sure how far cognitive liberty should extend,
but I am sure the US government restricts it far too much.
Congressman Murtha
continues to attack the war,
and even admits that Iraqis regard the Bush forces
as their enemy.
He doesn't say that the invasion was an evil and criminal act,
but it is still good to see this.
The Bush regime likes to claim that the Bush forces must remain in Iraq
to prevent a disaster whose potential was created by their own invasion.
Like all their justifications for occupying Iraq, it's baloney.
Here's why.
Bush told Republicans that the US Constitution "is just a piece of paper".
A broad range of peaceful protests in the UK have
led to criminal charges under "anti-terror" laws,
confirming that these laws are
really meant to attack
dissidents.
One of Bush's war aims is to give multinational agribusiness
companies
power over Iraqi farmers.
Rice now says that the CIA and US military are forbidden to torture,
but that this is
not a new policy. So it just reaffirms Bush's
long-standing pretense that what they do is not torture.
Shame on those European ministers that accepted this statement
as an excuse to disregard the facts.
Long before Bush, the US government taught other countries' dictators
to torture the opposition.
The Bliar regime
wants to postpone an inquiry into the theft of over a
billion dollars from the Iraqi puppet government, because the results
are likely to implicate Iyad Allawi, the candidate it supports.
In the US:
Donate to NARAL, and send a clever message to the FDA
about
emergency contraception.
James Massey talks about shooting Iraqi civilians,
and the systematic reasons why his unit did this over and over.
Zimbabwe rejected a gift of tents for the million people who were
driven out of their shanties in the city and now have no housing at
all.
The refusal is less puzzling if one considers that these people
supported the opposition party that Mugabe is trying to suppress, and
that he drove them out of the city specifically to attack them.
Naturally he will not let meddling do-gooders undermine the
tribulations he decided to impose on these people.
The Bush forces shamelessly continue their
corruption of Iraqi
journalists despite its exposure.
What this means is that any favorable story about the Bush forces that
comes from Iraq must be assumed to have been written by the Bush
forces. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Will US journalists let Bush fool them again?
Lord Steyn, recently retired from the UK's top courts,
accuses Bush of "war crimes" and "lawlessness on a grand scale".
Anyone who facilitated torture, or prepared the way for it,
is guilty along with the torturers themselves, and this includes
everyone in the UK who supported the acts.
A secret US government memo shows the specific intention to send a
suspect from Guantanamo to another country for torture. Thus, the
attempt to pretend they did not know what they were doing to these
people has been directly refuted.
(Of course, only people who wanted to be fooled were fooled.
But there are plenty of those in the US.)
Some members of the US Congress
called on Bush to start publishing
full casualty figures.
Concealing information about troop losses is a common technique of
dictators throughout history.
A Sunni spokesman says that the Iraqi Resistance will keep fighting
until the Bush forces set a timetable for withdrawal.
I urge people to call them "the Bush forces" so as to help Americans
resist Bush's attempt to manipulate them through their patriotism with
appeals to "support our troops". These are not our troops,
they are Bush's troops.
The Israeli government is putting Mordechai Vanunu on trial
for speaking with foreigners.
This is what Communist countries used to do to their citizens.
Two suicide bombers working together killed 43 Iraqi police
students in the police academy.
The people killed were not civilians--they were collaborating with the
enemy that has conquered their country.
Cindy Sheehan said, "I don't blame the people who killed Casey but the
people who brought us into this, who lied and deceived the world."
The use of secret witnesses in Saddam Hussein's trial means that they
can freely lie if they wish; if they lie, Hussein's defense has no way to
investigate and prove this.
Exxon paid a conservative schemer to draw up a plan to sabotage the
Kyoto treaty.
Remember, the "xx" in "Exxon" is pronounced as a rasping sound in the
back of the mouth, like "ch" in German "ach".
Colonel Westhusing of the Bush forces
committed suicide in Iraq
after he recognized what his mission consisted of.
I would have recommended he desert instead,
but I honor the decision that he made.
The newest desperate right-wing attempt to justify bringing Iraqis to
their knees: to prepare for another war, against Iran.
The Bush regime doesn't care about the
corruption
which diverts the money that is supposed to pay for
"rebuilding Iraq".
Perhaps that's because Bush is not really interested
in rebuilding Iraq--only in pretending to have done so.
The history of torture
as state policy in the US
has continued since before it was the US.
In regard to General Washington's raids on the Seneca indians in 1779,
I suspect that that was because they were fighting on the British side
in the Revolutionary War. By today's standards, destroying the
enemy's homes and farms is a war crime, excused only when practiced
upon Palestinians. In the 1700s, the Seneca would have agreed with
Washington that this was a normal tactic of war. So I won't judge the
raids of long ago as harshly as the torture of helpless prisoners.
Florida adopted a law called the "shoot first" law, which gives anyone
that kills another person (even a bystander) an all-purpose defense:
to say "I felt I was threatened".
This law effectively extends to everyone with a knife or a gun the
immunity currently enjoyed by police when they kill. We can see
how much that is abused by police, and that gives a picture of what]
it will do once extended.
There are campaigns to introduce similars laws in other states, too.
The torture policies of the Bush regime are making army officers and
CIA agents start to rebel in disgust. They see that the high
officials who have the principal responsibility for these crimes are
being protected by punishing underlings.
Terrorism in Spain: harmless bombs, preceded by warnings, snarl
traffic.
These warning shots will be cited as a justification for attacking
Europeans' freedom privacy, but the cure is far worse than the
disease. Terrorism is minor as a cause of death in Europe, as in the
US; it is dwarfed by murder, not to mention car accidents. Any
proposal to reduce terrorism at great cost to people's rights is
therefore unjustified.
Descriptions of Saddam Hussein's
torture practices are heart-rending.
There is some doubt whether the witnesses could really remember such
detail of what they saw at the ages of 10 and 15; at the same time,
I would not put any of this past him.
Once we convict and imprison those in charge of torturing,
disappearing and killing of prisoners, Bush and Saddam could be
cellmates.
New York City is
building tide-driven electric generators.
However, even when fully extended, it will be small compared with
the city's electricity needs. Conservation can do far more.
Various US states are trying to impose their own limits
on automobile emissions, to reduce global warming.
The Bush regime has
systematically sabotaged environmental
protection in the US using a wide range of tactics.
Some of these tactics are part of the War on Integrity,
which is the overall Bush approach to governance.
1/4 million protestors marched for democracy in Hong Kong.
Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize lecture.
Professor Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist in the US who was charged
with terrorism, was acquitted on the serious charges. The jury was
deadlocked on some minor charges, and he may have to face another
trial on them.
Al-Arian is one of the political leaders who were hit with a campaign
of fabricated accusations. I probably don't agree fully with their
views, but the idea of America is that they must be free to agitate
for them.
Khaled al Masri is suing the US government for kidnaping and torturing
him. They did it because his name seemed suspicious.
Condoleezza Rice said pretty-sounding words about torture. Here are
facts that contradict them.
An Iraqi doctor describes how the Bush forces have attacked and
destroyed hospitals, arrested surgeons during operations, and
shot at medics trying to pick up wounded.
The article also reports also shot civilians in cold blood as they
tried to leave Falluja following the procedures that had been
announced.
The Bush forces would surely deny most of this, but they have lied so
much that they have no credibility any more.
The tax and banking policies of rich countries encourage the rich
aristocrats of poor countries to move their money into the rich
countrie's banks. This hurts the poor countries.
Life in Iraq is a matter of constant fear of violence.
(This article accepts some questionable Bush assumptions about Al
Qa'ida and Zarqawi, and who is responsible for bombings. I doubt
those assumptions.)
The Islamic regime in Iraq has segregated schools by sex.
Bush may not have had this in mind when he launched his invasion,
but his inva