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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Saddam Hussein has been executed, after being convicted for a small part of his crimes. Now that he is dead, there will probably be no trials for the bigger crimes he committed. Was the execution intended to cover up the involvement of other governments in those larger crimes?
The execution of Saddam Hussein was unjust, regardless of his crimes, because execution is always unjust. He deserved life imprisonment for his murders. His execution makes it impossible to punish Bush properly for his similar crimes; imprisonment in the same cell with Hussein is the only fitting punishment for Bush.
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, who wrote a book about his three years of imprisonment in Guantanamo, has now been arrested again -- because his book criticizes the government of Pakistan for handing him over to Bush.
Privatization of highways in the US will give American drivers a taste of what the US has imposed on many other countries.
Because building a new highway is so politically difficult, as well as expensive, there is effectively no competition in the road market, so highway privatization is obviously harmful for the public. This practice is nothing more than raiding the public treasury. it ought to be a crime.
The Bush regime stationed "military spy teams" in many countries -- even "friendly" ones -- out of distrust for the CIA.
Large predatory companies squeeze billions out of poor Americans for loans, check cashing, money transfers, etc.
Those companies are also very effective at lobbying, which is why the government permits them to continue.
The Bush regime have had trouble, for years, figuring out who in Iraq to call "the enemy".
The Bush forces troops have a simpler view of things. They consider Iraqis enemies, pure and simple. For instance, a Bush forces patrol in Ramadi couldn't find the resistance fighters they were looking for. So they arrested 50 men at random, broke their arms, and crushed their fingers.
Since the Bush forces have already crushed medical care in Iraq, many of those men will be crippled for life. But I am sure some of them will overcome their handicaps to find ways to fight their country's oppressors. Perhaps some will become suicide bombers.
Israeli protestors set up a barbed-wire "separation fence" in the middle of Tel Aviv, giving Israelis a taste of what they are doing to Palestinians' lives.
An ice shelf bigger than Manhattan Island broke off from Ellesmere Island in the Arctic. This part of a long-term trend which is caused by global warming.
The melting of sea ice does not alter sea level, but ice reflects sunlight much more than water does. As the Arctic loses its ice, it will warm even more -- and if Greenland melts, it will be Manhattan Island that we say goodbye to.
The Bush forces, desperate for troops to secure their conquest of Iraq's oil, are forcing discharged troops back into the fight.
Lohachara Island, formerly home to 10,000 people, has been taken by rising seas.
It will be the first of many; as I write this note, in Manhattan Island, I wonder how long before it too is flooded.
The Ethiopean army has conquered Somalia; the fighters of the Union of Islamic Courts melted away.
If Somalis accept the foreign-appointed "transitional government", the results may be good. On the other hand, the transfer of allegience of warlords and clans sounds like what happened in Afghanistan, and it might unravel the same way Afghanistan is now doing.
Seaman Jonathan Hutto is organizing against the occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the thousands killed by the Bush forces and the civil war they have provoked, an increasing number of Iraqis are commiting suicide from the stress that this causes.
In a crack in Bush's War on the Environment, the US has listed polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming.
Venezuela's President Chavez plans to shut down an opposition TV channel.
It is true that the opposition media actively supported the coup attempt in 2002, going far beyond the expression of political opinions. But that is in the past, and shutting down opposition media is not a good thing to do.
Greg Palast documents the government actions that are keeping Blacks from returning to New Orleans -- political manipulation of disaster.
The city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt in the same place, because that is asking for future disaster. They can't keep raising the levees as the sea rises. But the city should be rebuilt, on higher ground -- moving the parts that were not flooded this time.
This will cost money, but it will be money well spent.
Armadillos are moving into the northern US, probably as a result of global warming.
Lots of other organisms are on the move too, including some that can devastate crops or make people sick.
Desmond Tutu compared Israel to the apartheid system he lived under. Here's more explanation.
Iran's oil revenue is declining fast.
To my mind, this lends more credibility to the statements made by the government of Iran about developing nuclear power.
The Bush forces death toll now exceeds that of the 9/11 attacks in the US.
The Bush regime is clearly responsible for the deaths of the soldiers it sent to Iraq, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis it has killed. Whether it was responsible for the attacks of Sep 11, 2001, has not been properly investigated.
As the Bush regime struggles to recruit enough soldiers for its wars of conquest, it is considering active recruitment of foreigners, offering US citizenship as a reward.
The Bush regime's aggression completely changes the way we must judge this issue, as it does so many others. If these recruits were truly "defending their country (to be)", as the soppy propaganda of the mainstream media says, giving them citizenship would be entirely appropriate. However, if that were the mission of the US Army, it would not have a shortfall.
President Carter warns that Bush has made the US the "prime culprit" in nuclear weapons proliferation, destroying decades of work.
Desmond Tutu: Apartheid in the Holy Land.
Uri Avnery: Israel's insistence on pretending it is in Europe is part of a world view that prevents peace.
A commentary on the war in Somalia calls on Somalian expatriates to try to reconcile the fighting.
I don't share that writer's admiration for Islamist martyrs; Islamic law is another name for cruelty and injustice. The regime of the Islamic Courts can only show merit when compared with the anarchic warlord violence that Somalia has known for decades.
Nonetheless, his point about where the war is headed seems valid. Ethiopia's army can probably conquer some or all of Somalia, but the "transitional government" in whose name they are doing so exists only in name, and its support comes purely from outside the country. Ethiopia is likely to have to turn to murderous warlords to exercise control. Somalis will not obey willingly.
There are reports that the US organized this intervention.
This is the sort of disastrous thing the Bush regime habitually does. Whether it intentionally promotes the growth of Al Qa'ida because it needs an enemy to scare Americans with, or whether it persistently fights Al Qa'ida in ways that backfire, is hard to tell from the outside -- because either way the outcome is the same.
Here's some more information.
The Colombian government has been tied by hard evidence to the right-wing death squads (which we always knew were working for that government).
The great debate among Iraqi Sunnis: is the fighting in Iraq a religious war or a fight against an external occupier?
Harith al-Dhari is right in his advice to Iraqis: don't fight each other, fight the occupiers. However, factually it is clear that many Iraqis have turned their backs on this wise advice, and are now engaged in what they see as a battle between Sunnis and Shi'ites. It is also clear that Bush forces activities have played up that conflict -- following the age-old policy of "divide and rule".
The UK made a small increase in the gas tax, which has drawn a lot of opposition from short-sighted drivers.
Greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly, and they are already too high. In my view, as long as driving continues to increase, the gas tax is too small.
Iranian president Ahmadinejad organized a world-wide holocaust-denial conference.
While B'liar is right to condemn this, he pointedly ignores the lessons about oppression that we ought to learn from Nazi atrocities.
Amy Goodman interviews Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh about Bush plans for Iran.
Ritter has a good point that most Americans are only "anti-losing", and don't recognize the invasion of Iraq as wrong. This is why the recently elected Democrats are doing nothing to end the war, and why I didn't support them and still do not.
Raoul Castro has suggested he might lead Cuba to more freedom of speech.
Bush is rushing to complete the theft of Iraq's oil, by pressuring the "Iraqi" government to hand it over to Western oil companies.
As Iraqis blead, and Americans pay, those thieves are the ones to blame.
Four Bush forces soldiers have been charged with murder for shooting helpless Iraqi civilians after the resistance attacked them.
These murder charges are a speck of doing what is right, in an ocean of Bush evil. The command structure was well on its way to covering up these murders when bad luck tripped them up. We can be sure that lots of other Bush forces soldiers succeed in covering up similar murders.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz says that Bush's war will cost the US 2 trillion dollar.
The Sunderbans, home to the world's largest wild tiger population and to almost 2 million people, is being flooded and destroyed by global warming.
Mugabe, who has crushed democracy and freedom in Zimbabwe, says he intends to stay on as "president" for as long as he likes.
A riot broke out as Copenhagen police tried to evict a squatter group from the building it has used, with official acquiescence, for 24 years.
A refresher about the PNAC, and what they did with their convenient New Pearl Harbor.
The Bush forces arrested Reuters reporter Ammar ad-Dulaymi.
Mahmoud Al-Safadi, recently released from 18 years in an Israeli prison, wrote an open letter to Iran's president Ahmedinejad calling on him to recognize the Holocaust.
I stand in honor of the moral courage shown by Palestinian in respecting the great wrong that was done to the ancestors of the Israelis that now oppress his people -- even as he champions the end of that oppression. Unlike most Israelis, Mr Al-Safadi has drawn the right lesson from the Holocaust: never again--to anyone!
Three cheers to the former Israeli soldiers who have gone on tour explaining to the world the "monsters" that they became while enforcing the Israeli occupation.
And three cheers to Jimmy Carter for daring to say in a prominent way what Israel is doing in Palestine.
Jews who want to prove the injustice of using Israel's wrongs as an excuse for anti-semitism have a duty to speak up in support of Carter.
A prominent expert in bioweapons disarmament accuses the Bush regime of developing biological weapons for aggression and terror.
This raises the question of what must be done to take away Bush's weapons of mass distruction.
Bush, admitting for the first time that he isn't winning the war against the Iraqi Resistance, took up the proposal to expand the US Army.
The most interesting point here is that this adopts the solution Democrats have found to avoid ending the occupation.
Maliki has a plan for how to use extra forces to defeat the Resistance.
I don't think it would work. Occupying armies that try to defeat a popular uprising tend to fail; the guerrillas "melt away" when the opposition is concentrated, and come back later.
However, Bush might win if he destroys outright the areas where Sunnis live, killing them or forcing them into exile. Examples such as Falluja show we should not put that past him.
Otherwise, the ISG's proposal for Iraqization is available as a way to make defeat look less bad.
Robert Gates, now confirmed as Secretary of "Defense", admitted that the Bush forces are not winning the war in Iraq.
But he presented a skewed version of the range of possible outcomes: either "improving" (from the Bush point of view) or a "regional conflagration", designed to put the idea of ending the war off the table.
An Israeli court ruled that Palestinians can sue the Israeli government for damages -- but the exceptions are so broad that this will cover just a small part of the damage that Israel does to them.
An evicted group of artist squatters in Barcelona transformed their defeat into theater, by protesting naked when the mayor spoke.
B'liar plans to gut the UK's Freedom of Information law. It has been too effective at enabling journalists to find out what he is doing.
The Correctional Corporation of America operates a privatized prison that holds 400 prisoners, half of them children, none of whom is accused of a crime.
The Bush regime is making the Guantanamo prison more painful, claiming all the prisoners are all dangerous "terrorists", even though many of them are known not to be terrorists at all.
The Iraqi resistance, which specifically attacks the occupying Bush forces, is more active than ever before, launching almost 1000 attacks a week.
Last summer's supposed plot to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" (but nothing to what Bush has committed in Iraq) turns out to be pure hype, but Bush and B'liar won't admit it.
Neo-cons in the US wanted Israel to attack Syria, and they are still blocking Israel from opening talks with Syria.
Citizens of Shenzhen, China, are trying to organize and run for local office for the sorts of local causes that people commonly champion in the West--despite legal and political systems rigged to keep them down.
The opposition in Russia, including former politicians and the leader of a banned party, planned a mass protest march in Moscow, defying Bush-style and B'liar-style restrictions on protest.
I presume this has already occurred, but I have not read about the outcome.
The Bush forces in Iraq kept an FBI informer in prison for 97 days, after arresting him in the raid triggered by his own information. They refused to believe him, and apparently did not hurry to ask the FBI.
If people working for the FBI take 97 days to be released, imagine how many years it takes if you don't have something like the FBI to back you up.
The Bush forces often attack the Iraqi Red Crescent. Now Iraqi kidnapers have joined in.
Where did all our wildlife go?
"Iraqi" prime minister al-Maliki called a meeting about national reconciliation, but nobody came to represent the militias.
Here is the full text of Carne Ross' testimony. He testifies that through mid 2002 (when B'liar was already preparing the "dodgy dossier" that would present excuses for war), UK intelligence believed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no WMD and posed no threat to any other country, and never got any evidence to the contrary.
He also shows why this means that the Bush invasion was illegal under the UN charter.
The Yangtze river dolphin (baiji) seems to be extinct.
The National Science Teacher's Association's refusal to distribute An Inconvenient Truth is no exception. The organizations has been thoroughly corrupted by business, and distributes materials to whitewash various forms of business wrongdoing. Its president lies to cover this up, and has tried to suppress criticism.
Russia is obstructing the investigation of Litvinenko's murder. This tends to confirm Russia was involved in the murder.
Gaza City: ' Free the women and you free the whole country'.
The IWW is picketing Starbucks Coffee for its anti-union activity.
The Atrocities of Augusto Pinochet and the United States.
The Israeli high court gave its approval in principle to political assassination.
The "Iraqi" courts set up by Bush dispense justice just marginally better than that of Abu Ghraib. The court can sentence you to death and get you executed, but if it finds you innocent, that doesn't mean you go free.
For women in Iraq, life is 'just like being in jail', thanks to Bush.
Nonviolent weekly protests in Bil'in continue, but the annexation wall has already been built through the town.
Nonviolent resistance is essentially a method of winning redress of an injustice by flagging it before the sight of the world, and pressuring the perpetrator through the shame brought by its own actions. To suppress the protests often requires even more flagrant injustice, which increases the shame.
This approach works against some oppressors, in some situations, but not always. Gandhi famously called on the Jews to practice nonviolent resistance, including fasting to death, against Nazi mistreatment, but even in the 1930s this probably would not have bothered the Nazis much. There was so much worldwide prejudice against Jews that the world would not have criticized them sharply. And once the Nazis were at war with most of the world, in the 40s, and began systematically killing Jews, nonviolent protest had even less of a chance to stop them. Armed resistance as in the Warsaw Ghetto was the only way.
Sad to say, the situation is similar in Palestine today. The world does not care enough about Israel's oppression of the Palestinians to make Israel feel the shame when its acts of oppression are highlighted.
Unless Israel shows a willingness to respect the rights of Palestinians when they are claimed without force, it cannot condemn the use of force to do so.
Although the Bush regime says that the prisoners in Guantanamo are "dangerous terrorists", in most cases this is not true.
The Bush regime keep up the pretense because the worst thing for a tyrant is to admit a mistake.
20,000 Egyptian textile workers, who must be rather badly paid, have held a successful strike when they were denied their annual bonuses.
The recent Bush forces attack on the Iraqi Red Crescent is part of a common pattern.
Bush plans to keep 200 or so prisoners in Guantanamo forever without a trial.
I distrust the claims of the US State Department that the reason for this is that "countries won't take their nationals back". Oh, it may be true, literally--but I suspect they refuse because Bush asked them to refuse.
Diplomat Carne Ross' previously secret report that UK intelligence never believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD or posed any threat to anyone until in 2002 they were told to provide support for such conclusions.
We already had the smoking gun. Now we have a film of Bush and B'liar holding it. So will this lead to removal and imprisonment of these lying mass murderers?
Florida Governor Bush doesn't mind killing prisoners, but wants it done quickly. Thus, a fluke mistake which slowed down an execution has been the accidental occasion for a stay of executions in Florida.
The death penalty does not work better to deter crime. Meanwhile, it debases society, and makes the frequent miscarriages of justice more uncorrectable. It should be abolished. Even mass murderers such as Saddam Hussein and Dubya should not be executed.
The Palestinian president is talking about calling early elections. Hamas, which won the previous elections, says this would be illegal.
This is the outcome of pressure from the US and Israel to crush the results of Palestinian democracy, which elected a government they did not like.
If I were a Palestinian with my general world view, I would disapprove of Hamas' religious orientation. But its refusal to surrender to Israeli brutality and annexation might win my vote nonetheless.
Many people arrested even for minor crimes during Hurricane Katrina are in jail awaiting trial, over a year later.
Pinochet succeeded in escaping punishment for his crimes by delaying his trial for his whole life.
The Spanish judge who tried to put Pinochet on trial laments his ability to avoid justice.
It is a mistake to credit Pinochet for Chile's economic success. His laissez-faire policies destroyed Chile's economy, and then Allende's achievements came to the rescue.
Irrational revulsion against prostitution leads to irrational and pointless harassment of prostitutes, which facilitates violence against prostitutes, including murder.
I think credit cards would not be dangerous if they were used in a healthy democracy. A democratic state would require credit card companies to follow understandable rules, to discourage people from getting in over their heads, and make money from people who use the cards wisely.
However, in the US all attempts to make them do this have been blocked by the power of the card companies' lobby. They send college students credit cards they didn't ask for, to give them a chance to get in trouble.
Indian forest dwellers are protesting in Delhi after officials suddenly destroyed their crops (and some of them were arrested resisting this).
It can be bad to have large numbers of people living in forests that are meant as reserves. However, if people lived there when the reserve was created, they are entitled to full compensation for being evicted -- something that poor people in India generally do not get when they are displaced by the government. And there can be no grounds for evicting them at all, if the government will then let other people live in the same forest area, or allow it to be cut down.
This issue is important, but the underlying problem is India's unchecked and dangerous population growth. 40% of Indians are under age 18.
According to Amartya Sen, around half of all Indians can't get sufficiently nourishing food, even though nobody actually starves to death. This too will be impossible to correct unless population growth is brought down.
Christians nuts, common in the US, are using a video game to encourage their followers to believe in the imminent second coming.
A Christian nut I knew once lent me a copy of the book, Left Behind. I read it, and concluded that this was a good presentation of the sort of events it would take to rationally justify their beliefs. The fact that these events are not happening therefore provides strong support for Atheism.
As for "the Night of Bush Hunting", that game could teach people it is ok to shoot mass murderers. However, the best way to deal with them is to arrest them, convict them in a fair trial, and sentence them to life in prison.
I used to say that George Bush and Saddam Hussein should spend their lives as cellmates, but it seems that we need Hussein to restore order in Iraq.
The Bush forces raided Falluja General Hospital, arrested doctors, closed it, and forced the rest of the staff out into the cold without blankets. This violates the Geneva Conventions, but Bush only says he obeys those.
" This is the first time in the history of this country that a court has held that a man may be held by our government in a place where no law applies."
Everyone: Colombian journalist Fredy Muoz Altamiranda has been accused of "rebellion"...for working for Telesur. Send a letter to the Colombian embassy in your country to protest this.
The occupation of Iraq has strengthened Iran's hand in the Middle East.
As a recent note shows, the Bush forces a year ago were looking at which sectarian side to back in Iraq. They chose to back the Shi'ites. So this result should not be a surprise.
The US refuses to accept Iraqi refugees, because it pretends that the violence that has made them flee will not last.
Since the occupation of Iraq is wearing down the Bush forces, they want more money to increase forces. They also want to be able to grind down the US National Guard more quickly.
Kofi Annan, in his parting speech, condemned the Bush regime for trampling human rights.
Many Americans have been sentenced to long prison terms, even life imprisonment, as part of the War on Drugs. Others have been killed by police raids, or by their imprisonment.
The Bush family protected Pinochet and his operatives from prosecution for crimes such as murder in the US, and even terrorist bombing, and Pinochet in return helped by providing weapons to Saddam Hussein.
10,000 scientists in the US have signed a statement condemning Bush's political interference in science.
This brings to mind Stalin's political interference in biology through the support of Lysenko's groundless theories about evolution. Effectively, nondemocratic political systems corrupt knowledge.
The Bush forces have played on the sectarian division in Iraq. Here is specific evidence of how.
Some see the ISG report as the beginning of a plan to blame the Iraqi government for losing its grip, as an excuse to pull out.
I hope it is -- at least it would be a way to end the occupation.
But another analysis suggests that the report is a plan for how to continue plans for US domination of the middle east. When it talks of "redeploying" some of the Bush forces combat units, that very likelys just means putting them in other bases inside Iraq. And when it talks of "reducing support" for the "Iraqi government", that could mean installing a strongman who could impose order.
If a strongman is wanted, I suggest Saddam Hussein. Some unknown would probably need even more brutality to establish control than he would, and it would be impossible to tell in advance if he is capable of doing the job.
Bush does not seem to want to follow the report's recommendations. So the main importance of the report is in its influence on public debate. The US mass media work with politicians to steer the debate towards the question of how to "win", and away from the question of how to punish the criminals that launched this war of conquest.
As the EU adopts a directive for recording and testing chemicals that might be dangerous, businesses want their own economic interests to come before public safety.
The UK law lords ruled that the police acted illegally when they stopped busses of citizens going to a protest.
The UK wants to extend censorship by banning the possession of artwork that present "abuse" of children. (I suspect their definition of "abuse" refers to sex, not violence.)
In the 1980s, US officials arguing that "child pornography" (involving "children" of ages up to 17) was evil because it was always made by "abusing" a "child". Then the US government made a mockery of that argument by prohibiting all art depicting "children" having sex, even when made without a real "child". But this law was rejected as unconstitutional.
Here's what the Axis of Evil has been up to in Iraq this week. Among other things, they blocked a woman giving birth from reaching the hospital, and they killed a helpless, bound prisoner because he laughed to see Bush forces soldiers dead.
That prisoner had courage; the soldiers that shot him are murderous cowards. The murder they committed was a big breach of military discipline, which shows that these troops are cracking up. That's the only good thing about what's happening in Iraq: it is grinding down Bush's army so he cannot invade any other countries.
Police have identified Dimitry Kovtun as the suspected murderer of Litvinenko. He spread Polonium contamination before he met with Litvinenko.
Jose Padilla, whom Bush wanted to imprison without trial, has been subject to permanent sensory deprivation for years. This appears to have made him lose his mind. He no longer understands what it means to be on trial, for instance.
But this is not an isolated case. Torture is routine, standard practice for the Bush regime.
Several Jordanians, released from an Iraqi prison after three years during which the question of their innocence was not addressed, carry permanent emotional and physical scars from their torture by the Bush forces.
Nine former prisoners who were tortured by the Bush regime are trying to sue Rumsfeld and top commanders of the Bush forces.
The Bush regime and its many subservient governments are the main "Axis of Evil" in the world today.
Congressman Kucinich is running for president again.
What a breath of fresh air, compared with all those "continue the war" Democrats. Kucinich for President!
As greenhouse gases increase, melting of Arctic ice will speed up, and by 2040 the Arctic Ocean will have essentially no permanent ice.
Since ocean absorbs more heat from sunlight than ice, the result will be even more warming.
Hezbollah demands a new government in Lebanon, through large street protests, which remain peaceful. But there are small sparks that could set off a civil war if people are not careful to avoid it.
Corporate mercenaries are active in many countries, not just Iraq. The Geneva Conventions apply to mercenaries, but the Bush regime loves them because in practice enforcing those inconvenient rules of war against them is too hard.
The US School of the Americas used to teach torture to soldiers from other American countries. In response to public condemnation, the US changed the school's name, and contracted its activities. Now Bush is expanding them again, to spread torture through the Western Hemisphere.
UNICEF: Children suffer when women face discrimination.
Senegal's success story in AIDS prevention.
1 in 32 American adults are in prison, on probation, or on parole, due to the insane 'War on Drugs'.
As long as this war remains "on drugs", it will continue to devastate the US.
The Republicans have created a fiscal disaster and left the Democrats holding the bag.
The disaster is no surprise; Republicans' tax cuts for the rich, together with spending billions on the crime of invading Iraq, had to cause such disaster sooner or later.
The Bush forces threatened to rape Um Ahmed unless her husband surrendered. Then they threatened to rape her unless he confessed to their list of crimes. But this sort of kidnaping is just the tip of the Iraqi iceberg.
RAWA says that the US-established Afghan government doesn't respect human rights very much, since it is full of murderous warlords and gangsters.
Notwithstanding RAWA's points, the current government does appear to be better than the Taliban in some ways--it encourages schools for girls, for instance. But it may be true that a government made of warlords and gangsters can't win much popular support.
Britons with multiple sclerosis who sent free "cannibis bars" to other victims of MS face 14 years in prison.
Corporations are honing the practice of giving a tiny fraction of income to charity, in order to make you feel good about their much larger profits, your own wasteful comsuption, and any other problems.
This is part of a general tendency to the corruption of most areas of life by business.
One Iraqi thinks the Mahdi army has access to personal information on former Baathists, and used it to track down him and his brother.
If the "Iraqi" government has this information, it would not be hard for Shi'ite death squads to get it.
Sexual paranoia in the US has reached a point of total absurdity.
You can see the dishonesty of the school officials when they cite a student's privacy as an excuse to refuse to respond to a complain made on behalf of that student.
I'm with John Holt: school is not a very good way for children to get an education.
The IWW is extending its campaign against Starbucks, which has repeatedly punished workers for union organizing.
A riot broke out in privatized UK prison, when the guards tried to turn off the TV which was showing a news report about how badly that prison was run.
A trial run in Heathrow airport shows the sort of biometric surveillance that the UK government wants to impose on everyone.
They always bring out the absurd idea that "If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide". But that's nonsense; the question is not whether your actions are wrong, but whether someone else (perhaps someone powerful) could hurt you if he knew. Nearly everyone wants to keep aspects of their life from being known to others.
Al Sadr's militias are openly attacking Sunnis in a part of Baghdad.
Sunnis cannot effectively defend themselves and their neighborhoods from Shi'ite militias, because the "Iraqi" army and police are almost branches of those same Shi'ite militias, and they prevent such defense. Iraq is now inevitably going to be divided into Sunni and Shi'ite areas. But the Shi'ites might well commit genocide conquering the Sunni areas.
Uri Avnery reads the Baker report as a proposal to make Israel agree to peace with Palestine.
Exxon continues funding the denial of global warming. The executives in charge of this probably figure on moving to high ground when global warming floods the coastal cities.
A protest in favor of democracy in the kingdom of Tonga led to violence. Some 8 protesters were killed, perhaps by their own fire.
The article says that the protest destroyed most of the capital city, but then it admits this refers only to the central business district. Perhaps the parts of the city where people live don't count for businessmen.
The violence could be used as an excuse to refuse to establish a democracy.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) introduced a resolution to impeach George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Condolezza Rice.
Here is the resolution.
The Bush regime is breaking the law yet again, by profiling international travelers for their "terrorist potential" even though Congress forbade it.
I think Bush will use this as he has used past confrontations with Congress and laws: to undermine the system of checks and balances by ignoring it. I predict that he will not stop for anything short of impeachment.
The US army has a new weapon which tortures people at a distance. It causes unbearable pain. The torture does not cause permanent injury...provided people run away fast enough.
This weapon will be ideal for suppressing embarrasing political protest.
Clothing workers in Bangladesh are forced to work 80 hour weeks and get paid under 10 cents an hour. These clothes are sold to major retail companies which claim to require their manufacturers not to do this. When the factories are checked, the companies force the workers to support the lie.
This is what "free trade" treaties do.
(5 pence in the UK are worth around 8 or 9 cents in the US.)
The Iraq Study Group may not have a solution for how to end the war, but it does have a way for its corporate friends to make money.
The Bush forces killed the civilians in some houses, then bombed them from the air to try to hide the crime.
This article explains why the Bush forces call them all "terrorists".
There are two levels of lie here. A person who really carries a gun might be a resistance fighter (though this is not certain), but is probably not a terrorist. A person who is in a house with a gun may very well be neither one.
The 13 coutries with the worst censorship of the Internet.
Many other countries practice censorship on the net, however. The whole EU joins the US in censoring the free software that you can use to read a DVD.
The UK spent around $50 million of its "foreign aid" persuading poor countries to privatize their water and sanitation systems.
Greg Palast: The Baker Boys: Stay Half the Course.
The Bush regime is systematically underreporting the violence in Iraq, presenting perhaps 1/10 of the real level. This violence has led 100,000 Iraqis to flee the country each month, with almost 2 million now in exile.
A group of Israeli academics asks people around the world to write to their own governments in opposition to Israel's policy of refusing to allow Palestinians with foreign citizenship to be residents in Palestine.
Brazil has declared protection for 63,000 square miles of the Amazon rain forest.
Even assuming this is successfully enforced, it is just a first step in what must be done. Over 200,000 square miles of the rain forest were cut down in the past 35 years.
The Iraq Study Group report recognized that things are going wrong for the Bush forces, but admits no uncertainty in the assumption that their "victory" is to be desired.
The report recommends a plan of Iraqization of the occupation, which could mean recruitment of Iraqi traitors, or could mean helping the Shi'ites to commit genocide against the Sunnis. Or it could be a way to cut and run without losing face, as happened in in Vietnam.
Iraq: One by one, supporters of the war admit the truth.
Far from closing the Guantanamo prison, the Bush regime is replacing the facilities with new ones.
Many Iraqi women are imprisoned by the Bush forces, often as hostages, and sometimes they are raped by their jailors.
CNN announcer Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps.
Bush and his Christian fanatics have caused a lot more deaths in recent years than Muslim fanatics have. Should they be put in concentration camps?
B'liar, apparently with Brown's approval, wants to eliminate local planning control so that projects "in the national interest" can be forced through.
These projects "in the national interest" include nuclear power plants, which are dangerous and vulnerable to attack, as well as airport expansions that can only be needed if air travel grows to an extent that will assure global catastrophe.
Political opposition in the Maldive Islands has been crushed with the arrest of the dissidents.
Israeli police tortured a 15-year-old Palestinian, and threatened to rape him, until he signed a confession he could not read.
Israel often tortures Palestinian prisoners.
Arabs who are Israeli citizens are not treated very well either. Israel now plans to destroy the homes of Bedouin who live in the Negev desert.
The resistance took control of the Iraqi town of Siniya, which is now besieged by the Bush forces. It looks like they are trying to starve and freeze the town into submission.
Was Rumsfeld's "leaked" memo a plan to falsify his image for the future?
The Bush forces have at least 100,000 contract workers in Iraq. Many of them are mercenaries.
Global inequality: half the world's wealth belongs to the richest 2%, while the poorest half own just 1%.
In India, thousands of Dalit women are forced into the "career" of scavaging excrement from toilets. This is not just disgusting, it is dangerous.
A team of engineers has tried to design a safer way to do this job.
However, despite its technical success, convincing India to invest in switching to this new technology will be very difficult. And making the job safer is not a substitute for ending the bigotry of the caste system.
UCLA police attacked a student with a tazer as he was leaving the library. (He had been ordered to leave because he did not have his university ID card with him.) They kept attacking him while he was lying on the floor, because he didn't get up when they ordered him to. (A tazer can stun a person so much he cannot stand up.)
When a witness asked for a policeman's badge number, the policeman threatened to attack the witness.
I sent this letter to the editor, but I don't think they printed it.
Dear Editor
Americans' safety is endangered by a cocky and lawless gang that will threaten nearly anyone. The riot in the library gave UCLA students a taste of their violence, but a glance at www.copwatchla.org shows that it's not unusual in your city. What is special about this instance is that they made a slip.
The library rioters threatened a student who asked them to identify themselves. Intimidating witnesses is standard practice for this gang, and it is usually impossible to prosecute them because they lie to protect each other. But this time they were caught red-handed. The student who was threatened now has an opportunity to deal the gang a sharp defeat--by pressing charges and insisting that justice be done.
The real message of this letter is addressed to that student. Please, I beg you, insist on justice. No matter who asks you to let these gangsters off the hook, stand firm! None of us will be safe until we rein them in, and we now depend on your courage. If you can put a few of the hooligans behind bars, or even just take away their badges and weapons, the rest of them will not be so eager to attack again.
Sincerely,
Richard Stallman
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Traces of radiation in airplanes is evidence that Litvinenko's poisoning was done by Russian agents.
The leader of SCIRI wants the Bush forces to remain in Iraq and let the "Iraqi security forces" have more control.
SCIRI's Badr Brigades operate death squads that are part of those same "security forces". They are now paying doctors to tell them about Sunnis in hospitals in order to kill them.
I think SCIRI wants to use the Bush forces' heavy weapons and air power as backing to commit genocide.
Torture at Abu Ghraib followed the methods that the CIA developed and that the US has taught to many governments. The US Congress recently legalized the use of these torture methods.
The War on Integrity continues: Bobby Maxwell was a US government auditor that collected millions of dollars that oil companies had shortchanged the government. The Bush regime works for the oil companies, which considered his effectiveness a problem. So it eliminated his job.
The Bush forces in Falluja deliberately set fire to the Red Crescent headquarters, then stopped people from putting out the fire. It was totally destroyed. Meanwhile, in Samarra they took a resistance fighter's children (ages 7 and 10) hostage.
Olmert offered peace and an independent state to the Palestinians. I worry, however, that this offer implicitly demands acceptance of the annexation wall, and the annexation of large parts of the West Bank's land and water resources.
The propaganda campaign for biometrics and the total surveillance society.
FEMA bureaucrats have been very effective in shutting out Katrina victims from federal aid.
The insurrection in Oaxaca has been crushed, and the police are going around disappearing and killing people.
President Chavez was reelected in Venezuela with a large majority.
Battlestar Galactica shows Americans Iraq from the Iraqis' side.
This sort of allegory is necessary because such ideas can't penetrate the bias of mass media "news".
GI Special responds to a soldier's criticism of its opposition to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another soldier says he is being sent to Iraq and has concluded that it is only for Bush cronies' profits. Meanwhile, a conscientious objector was sent to Iraq based on spurious requirements, in violation of military regulations.
Hezbollah and various allies mounted massive peaceful demonstrations against the US-backed Lebanese government.
Heroic activist Zackie Achmat risked his life to force South African President Mbeki to back down from his insane policy on HIV.
The War on Integrity continues: a State Department analyst who told the truth about B'liar's "special relationship" with the US faces pressure to lie or be punished.
Chanu Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 6 years to protest killings of civilians by Indian soldiers. For 6 years she has been force-fed. Thangjam Manorama Devi had it even worse: the soldiers that raped her then machine-gunned her body to shreds, to destroy the evidence.
Why did Maliki cancel his meeting with Bush?
Was this because of the US memo which said that he either can't or won't do the job that Bush assigned to him? (Of course he can't; nobody can do it.) Or was this because al Sadr threatened to scuttle the "Iraqi" government if he had the meeting?
US residents: tell national pharmacy chains to stock Plan B (emergency contraception).
Like many other rulers before him, Bush refuses to recognize the reality of defeat.
However, Bush's defeat is not in his homeland, His policy in Iraq is dead in substance, but he can keep the dead body propped up for as long as he can make others pay the price.
Hilary Benn, who wants to be deputy leader of the Labour Party, is trying to avoid government measures to prevent global warming. His alternative: "Let's just ask individuals to conserve".
Conservation by individuals can make a difference, but does he want to bet the survival of London on their making enough difference?
The Bush forces now openly talk of using death squads to kill the leaders of the Iraqi resistance.
The joke here is that they have already done just this, by allowing the Iraq police to be infiltrated by Shi'ite death squads. These death squads kill lots of Sunni civilians, but they don't have as much success against fighters. However, if they commit genocide against the entire Sunni population, that would extinguish the Sunni parts of the resistance along with the population from which it comes.
Iraqi militias are trying to provide law and order in Iraqi neighborhoods.
In effect this is use of the solution I have proposed.
Al Sadr is trying to convince the "Iraqi" parliament to demand withdrawal of the Bush forces.
The "Iraqi" government will be truly Iraqi only when it does this.
Meanwhile, Al Sadr's followers have ordered Iraqi Christians to follow their extreme Muslim rules.
The potential for this sort of tyranny is always to be found lurking in the heart of a mostly Muslim society.
A Dalit who was raped was then burned alive for testifying.
Injustice, even brutal crime against Dalits is not rare.
Cattle contribute more to global warming than cars.
Cattle raising also causes deforestation. This means people need to eat less meat. Individuals can do this, but I don't think individual activism will be enough to deal with the problem. I think we need to tax meat just as we tax gasoline: to discourage consumption. Cattle raising also causes deforestation. This means people need to eat less meat. Individuals can do this, but I don't think individual activism will be enough to deal with the problem. I think we need to tax meat just as we tax gasoline: to discourage consumption.
As part of the War on Integrity, Bush continues appointing people to run Federal offices whose mission is to protect the public or the environment who oppose the mission they are supposed to do.
The Bush forces want to send more troops to Iraq.
This won't really change anything, because a few more troops won't defeat a whole occupied country whose populace hates them. But it will at least buy time against the pressure to end their crime.
Newt Gingrich wants to abolish political freedom of speech, officially, to "protect" us from Al Qa'ida.
If we were going to censor some political opinions, the highest priority should be opinions like Gingrich's which attack the constitution. But even that much censorship would be too much.
NIST is planning to condemn all electronic voting machines that directly count the votes.
I wonder if Bush will intervene to stop or change this report. He has to, if he intends to defend the gains of the War on Integrity.
Berlusconi is accused of trying to rig his last election.
Hans Blix says B'liar's government's nuclear weapons program makes it harder to discourage countries such sa Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and generally undermines the nonproliferation treaty.
Patti Santangelo's attempt to resist RIAA bullying was sabotaged by a sleazy lawyer.
An interview with Nir Rosen, who recently saw al Sadr speak in Iraq. He talks about the power of various militias including the Bush forces.
The Bush forces are considering more or less pulling out of al Anbar province. They would send "Iraqi" (Shi'ite and Kurdish) troops to occupy the area.
Shi'ite troops could easily take it into their heads to commit genocide there, spreading the butchery of Baghdad. However, they are not as well armed as the Americans in the Bush forces, so in al Anbar they might end up retreating from the resistance.
Bush's Iraq Study Group is preprogrammed not to reconsider anything important.
The National Science-Teachers Association rejected a gift of 50,000 copies of "An Inconvenient Truth". Telling the truth about global warming would be inconvenient for their funding from Exxon.
The corruption of civil institutions (both governmental and nongovernmental) by corporate money debilitates civic life and gives the corporate donors control over politics. An association of science teachers ought to have noble social goals, and maybe this did at one time, but now it seems to have has become primarily a scheme to help business brainwash kids. (It probably still does some useful work, which it uses as an excuse to pretend that the organization has noble social goals.)
It is possible for an organization to accept a certain amount of donations from companies while refusing to let them set the agenda. The Free Software Foundation (fsf.org) does this. To avoid being corrupted by these donations, I as president must be prepared to say "no thanks" to some or all of those funds, if and when they try to distort our goals.
This requires a clear awareness of the kind of corruption that could happen, and the firm will to avoid it. The prevalence of such corruption of institutions in our society makes such awareness and firm will rare. People get used to corruption and tolerate it, and that makes it easy for institutional leaders to excuse their corruption in their own minds. The leaders of the NSTA probably have convinced themselves that being Exxon's tool on global warming is worth while because it gets them funds to do some small usefu thing.
Remember that "xx" in "Exxon" is pronounced like the "ch" in German "ach" ;-). Can you say "Yech-on"?
A flood of exotic pets threatens to bring viruses along.
For many kinds of animals, their capture in the wild is also likely to be horribly traumatic, which is another good reason to discourage import of pets caught in the wild.
Under elected president Preval, violence in Haiti is decreasing slowly, but the poor are just as poor.
It is noteworthy that Clinton imposed cruel neoliberal economic policies on President Aristide in exchange for helping him regain power. Maybe that had something to do with why he was unable to make things much better. And maybe similar external opposition is why Preval can't help the poor.
Israeli troops occupied a Palestinian house and took 15 members of the family hostage in their home.
I've heard that this is standard practice.
NATO's resolve to continue the war in Afghanistan is wearing thin.
I supported this war, but I don't think it can be won any more unless the conditions that now give the Taliban its support are changed.
Charges of war crimes including torture have been filed in a German court against Rumsfeld and others.
Sunni Iraqi leader Al Dhari condemns Al Qa'ida for the killing of Iraqi civilians, but says it is ok to fight militias that support the "Iraqi" government against the resistance.
I don't think it is really clear that al Sadr's militia supports that government. In some ways it does, in some ways it doesn't.
The Bush forces continue heavy aerial bombing in Iraq. This kills a lot of civilians.
Artillery fire does too.
Many EU nations 'knew about CIA jails', and officials are still covering up their cooperation.
Bush continues to deny that the prisoners were tortured. Where Clinton tried to squeeze the meaning of "sex", Bush tries to squeeze the meaning of "torture".
Cheney has a long career of trying to expand presidential power at the expense of all kinds of checks and balances.
This is what conservatives used to be against.
Israel and Palestinians have agreed to end the fighting in Gaza.
US oil companies are accused of contracting the gasoline supply so as to boost prices.
If they are doing so, it has an important beneficial effect: to reduce gasoline consumption. (In Europe, taxes have been used to keep gasoline prices much higher than in the US, ever since the 70s.)
The US should do this with taxes too, so that the windfall goes to the treasury instead of to the people that own the oil companies. But low gasoline prices are a suicidal goal.
The UK now has privately-owned police-- constables who are paid by (and perhaps loyal to) specific businesses.
While US media accuse Syria of the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, the Arab world generally holds the US and/or Israel responsible. Hezbollah is showing respect for the murdered minister and his family and faction, in an attempt to build unity.
Neighborhood by neighborhood, Baghdad descends into civil war.
That Baghdad is mostly divided into Sunni and Shi'ite by the Tigris river could facilitate peace through partition.
Former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London using radioactive polonium, production of which requires expensive facilities. No one knows which side killed him, but he had said he was about to identify Anna Politkovskaya's killer.
Too bad he didn't also say he had put the information in a letter to be opened in the event of his death.
Robert Fisk: Gemayel's mourners know that in Lebanon nothing is what it seems.
Despite the ouster of the Taliban, Afghan women are still treated as chattels, while women MPs have to hide from assassins.
Police entered the university in Oaxaca and threatened to attack its radio station, which supports the protests.
Ecuador has elected a new president, Rafael Correa Delgado, who opposes the "free trade" treaty with the US and will expel US troops from Ecuador.
Israeli troops regularly take Palestinians hostage.
Human Rights Watch says that Saddam Hussein's trial was not fair and the verdict was "questionable".
The full report.
Reportedly the Bush forces shelled houses in Ramadi, then prevented anyone from rescuing the people who were bleeding to death in the rubble. 35 people died, all civilians.
Iraq's simmering civil war is moving rapidly to overt civil war. Al Sadr's militia took over a state TV station and denounced the "Iraqi" government, while the chief Sunni cleric (whom the government tried recently to arrest) was in Egypt asking other Arab countries to de-recognize that government.
The Bush forces are to blame for this civil war, but they cannot possibly end it, being a hated occupying force. They can give Iraq the peace of the grave, which they have given to many Iraqis already. But the only way to achieve peace for the living is to strengthen various militias into governments that can control and defend territories from each other, and eventually make peace with each other.
General Karpinski says that Rumsfeld personally told civilian interrogators to practice specific torture methods in Abu Ghraib.
NYC police killed an unarmed man leaving his bachelor party. His friends were merely wounded.
He was driving very badly, and perhaps was drunk. But that shouldn't be a reason to shoot him.
Six Iraqis tell about life in the violent mess that Bush has made of Iraq. They wish for the days of Saddam Hussein.
Iraq's Palestinians are targeted by kidnapers and find it hard to flee anywhere else.
A commission in Nepal ruled that the king, formerly an absolute monarch, should be punished for his troops' violent attacks that killed or injured some 5,000 protesting citizens.
Palestinians 'own 40%' of Israeli West Bank settlements, says Peace Now.
Bush has made the US government more vindictive towards government employee whistleblowers.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the same court that gave us software patents. It seems to be biased against the public interest in every area it touches. This suggests it should be abolished.
In Russia, the government will soon control 90% of the mass media.
In the US, the megacorporations own the media and control the government.
Paul Roberts, a prominent conservative, calls for the impeachment of Bush for attacking the constitution.
Iraq's Al-Shariqiya TV station says its staff are being systematically attacked by militias.
Three CIA agents were in the room when Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated. There is no obvious explanation for their presence there, and they worked far away from LA.
Robert Gates, now appointed as the Secretary of Defense, appears to have distorted intelligence reports about Iran in the 1980s in order to help Reagan justify selling missiles to Iran. These missiles were provided as ransom for hostages kidnaped by Iranian-supported groups, but the CIA said, apparently with no new information, that Iran was no longer supporting terrorists.
When Reagan ransomed hostages with weapons, he betrayed his country. His name should be remembered in shame.
B'liar aims to impose close surveillance on everyone in the UK, starting with children, in the name of "protecting" them. But the system is likely to undermine protection of children who are seriously at risk, even as it attacks their privacy.
Sunni car bombs killed over 200 Shi'ites in one day in Baghdad. (This article has an earlier, lower figure.) And the health ministry was attacked.
The next day, Shi'ites retaliated by burning Sunnis to death while "Iraqi" troops looked on passively.
It is interesting that the al Sadr militia demands that Maliki not meet with Bush. Maliki cannot disobey Bush, but he depends on the support of that militia. So it seems to me that this is a deliberate attempt to put Maliki in an impossible situation and bring down the "Iraqi" government.
The occupation is destroying Iraq's medical system, which is under the control of religious fanatics that know nothing about medicine.
Australia knew a year in advance that the invasion of Iraq was already decided.
B'liar talks big about aid for Afghanistan, but since he exaggerates the achievements of past aid, it looks like this is just talk.
Rumsfeld and Bush were personally involved in directing the interrogation (i.e., torture) of an al-Qa'ida suspect in 2002. They must be glad that Congress voted to exempt torturers from prosecution.
CACI, a torture-for-hire military contractor, has repeatedly sued and threatened journalists that expose its activities.
Environmentalists are suing the Bush regime for failing to produce a legally required report on climate change.
As Bush collides with Americans' increasing desire to end the occupation of Iraq, this may force Americans to confront the truth about the war, and about US power and aggression in general.
Ministers in Bush's Iraqi government are staying away from work because they might be assassinated. One minister has gone traveling for a month, and the ministry does not know where he is.
Bush's project of training Iraqis to fight for him was planned so badly that it is a joke.
At the same time, it encountered problems which come inevitably out of the nature of the situation: the Bush forces are hated by all patriotic Iraqis, and they and their collaborators face unremitting attacks from the resistance.
Chertoff's "Chilling Vision" of the future -- rule of law, with respect for human rights, is what he fears.
Indonesian protesters told Bush: You are the terrorist.
Bush's response, that protest shows a healthy democracy, is hypocritical lip-service coming from him, but it is true, and it presents a good yardstick for judging the US. Protest in the US is compressed into "free speech zones", and our democracy is sick.
Was Pierre Gemayel killed by Syria, or by Israel?
I don't have an opinion. Either one might have done it.
October was the deadliest month of the occupation of Iraq, with almost 4,000 civilians known to have been killed. But the record probably won't last long.
Israeli troops stood by and watched while settlers attacked and injured a Swedish visitor who had come to escort Palestinian children to school. Then they arrested the attackers, but let them go without even taking their names.
The visitor was there because the settlers frequently attack these children on their way to school.
My mother told me that, when she was young, at Easter time the Catholic children used to call her "Christ killer". The Catholic Church dropped this calumny decades ago, but now the settlers are resurrecting it and throwing it in Christians' faces. Are they nuts? Or do they want a resurgence of anti-semitism?
Perhaps that will facilitate their standard lie, which consists mislabeling all condemnation of their violence (and their theft of Palestinian land and water) as "anti-semitism".
Dishonest slaughterhouses open a door to BSE to spread in the UK.
The Bush forces have declared total curfew on some Iraqi cities. Telephone and internet use are banned as well. It is worse than being in prison.
Perhaps they hope Iraqis will come to regard a mere murderous military occupation as a step up.
Former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi says that the US and UK are failing to recognize the reality of Iraq.
However, when he opposes partition, he too does not recognize the reality of Iraq. Iraq is already partitioning itself, as a result of the conflicts that Bush helped to stir up.
I sympathize with the wishes of Iraqis that continue to support a unified Iraq just as I do with the wishes of secular Iraqis that do not want Islamic rule (i.e., injustice).
The reason I support allowing militias to set up an effective de facto partition of Iraq is not that I think partition is good, but rather that I think it is the only way to end the mass murder, except for genocide or unbearable tyranny.
The Democratic Party is already making an accommodation with Bush to extend the occupation of Iraq.
It did not take them long to let down the hopes of the people who voted for them. I am not surprised, though, because few of the Democratic candidates said that the occupation was wrong. That is why I did not support them.
The Bush forces are cheating disabled veterans out of their benefits.
But they have to cut costs somewhere to pay the high fees that mercenary companies charge.
Sudan "agreed in principle" to a stronger foreign military force in Darfur, after its militias massacred civilians in Chad.
Reportedly Syria will demand the return of the Golan heights as the price for cooperating with Bush on Iraq -- as well as a timetable for withdrawal of the Bush forces.
It would be bad if Assad and Bush, neither of whom respects human rights, get together on a plan to keep Iraq in subjection.
The US and Israel are planning an international conference to boost Fatah over HAMAS. This is meant to forward Israeli plans for annexation of parts of the West Bank.
At the same time, Israel is threatening to assassinate the elected leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which comes from HAMAS.
Israel formed the Islamist organization HAMAS in the 80s so as to weaken the power base of secular Fatah. This has sometimes backfired, but the rivalry between them is sure useful for Israeli plans.
Bush mercenaries in Iraq were fired after they reported that their boss murdered Iraqis for fun.
Their employer doesn't deny the shootings, but defends firing the mercenaries that reported them. This rules out all explanations except that their are monsters.
The use of privately employed mercenaries by the US government should be prohibited by law for this reason as well as many others.
Protestors in Wales have blocked construction of a monster natural gas pipeline through land that is prone to landslides.
The deputy health minister of the "Iraqi" government was kidnapped.
It's peculiar that the kidnapers included police (Shi'ite) while he is a Shi'ite too. I wonder if two Shi'ite militias are fighting.
A list of Bush quotations.
The list of Bush quotes is a hoax. See snopes.com for details.
A conscientious object in Turkey faces repeated trials and imprisonments for his refusal to enter the army.
Iran, 26 years of religion in power, has made young people secular.
It should be noted that the position of Ayato
