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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Iraqi refugees turn to sex trade in Syria.
Norway has adopted a law that government information must be distributed in open formats.
Sudan has accepted 2000 Palestinian refugees who were stuck for months at the Iraqi border.
The "Homegrown Terrorism" act would set up a new system of censorship, and set up rules under which the heroes of American democracy would have been called "terrorists".
The Bush regime has a pattern of stretching laws to extend its power. We dare not assume it will not stretch this power too. Nor can we assume a Clinton regime would be any better.
The occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan are costing 15 billion dollars per month.
New York State plans to upgrade and unify its efforts to control invasive species.
It would be more effective in the long run to increase precautionary measures against introduction of invasive species. But that runs into opposition, because these measures are inconvenient.
In the short term, this benefits Musharraf, who now has no plausible rival for power.
If Musharraf declined to provide security for Bhutto, that does seem to make him partly responsible. Even if he did not organize the assassination, he knew there would be more attempts.
Meanwhile, Greg Palast says that the way Republicans intend to steal the 2008 election is by systematic fraudulent challenges to Democratic voters, so as to disenfranchise or scare them.
The Bush forces in Iraq don't filter the Internet, but they have killed a number of journalists.
The Hindu fanatics who usually attack Muslims now have attacked Indian Christians.
There is a serious issue at the root of this. Upper-cast Hindus treat the Dalits (formerly called "untouchables") like trash, and Hinduism openly supports this cruelty. Thus, many Dalits think of converting to some other religion in which all are treated as equals. Often they choose Buddhism, following Dr. Ambedkar, but sometimes they choose Christianity. Either way, they face violent opposition from upper-caste Hindus that want to maintain them in subjection.
It could be easier just to declare themselves Atheists. However, I think they need the support of some larger community to make their rejection of Hinduism effective. And some forms of Buddhism are Atheist.
Lots of companies try to convince you to buy by saying they give some money to charity. But you can't necessarily trust them.
I've always been suspicious of statements that "a portion of what you pay will be given to XYZ". What portion will they give? .0000001 percent?
Australia's new government discarded the plan for a national ID card.
J. Edgar Hoover asked President Truman to imprison over 12,000 Americans without trial.
Is this war fueled by diamonds? Something must be keeping it going.
But Bush will try again.
Novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about how art depends on copying and imitating other art, and what that means for copyright.
This is a good analysis of the basic issue of copyright today. I brought up related points in a more abstract way in another article, but he says it better.
However, the propaganda term "intellectual property" led Lethem to try to involve in patent law in a subject where it is not relevant at all. He recognized and denounced the bias in the term; but he did not recognize the other mistaken supposition it carries: that copyright and patents are similar issues and should be treated together. They are not similar; the points he raises about copyright don't relate to patent law at all.
In an unusual show of wisdom, fishermen decided to protect clownfish in Australian reefs where the population has already been hit by global warming.
If all fishermen were that rational, we would not have to worry about sweeping the oceans clean of fish.
Richard Dawkins will take the fight against religious irrationalism to the enemy's home ground.
Some right-wing Israelis, and a few unusually wealthy and unusually right-wing American Jews, have great influence in US politics. How do they respond if you talk about this? If you say this phenomenon is good, they welcome your approval. But if you criticize the phenomenon, they say you're making it all up because you're anti-Semitic.
The US military is training soldiers to be religious fanatics.
Does this remind you of Al Qa'ida?
Bush continues his War on the Environment by trying to stop California from enacting stronger emissions standards. California will sue.
The Republican Party used dishonest false-flag phone calls to corrupt the 2002 New Hampshire senate election. Then the Corruption Department delayed the investigation, so that Bush and his supporters would not have to pay the price in 2004.
Homeless men who have frozen to death sleeping the streets of Paris have ignited a scandal.
I'd expect that lots of homeless men freeze to death in the US, but we don't read about it because our society (or our media?) are more callous. In other words, France has a ways to sink before it reaches our level.
Cheney is personally responsible for imposing Halliburton's mandatory arbitration policy, which prevents Jamie Leigh Jones from suing that company for rape (or for imprisoning her).
Cheney is probably also partly personally responsible for the law-free zone that protects the Halliburton employes who raped her, and the others who locked her up when she complained, from being prosecuted.
Removing idle functionaries from the public payroll is generally a good thing, when there is a private economy in which people can get work. In a place such as Palestine, where opportunity is very limited, government handouts to those functionaries play the role of a welfare system. Cutting it off might not be an improvement.
Bil'in continues its weekly nonviolent protests. Last week the Israeli Army attacked the protestors as they approached.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the annexation wall should be moved to give Bil'in access to more of its land, but nothing has been done to move it.
A Brazilian bishop is on hunger strike to block a wasteful dam project.
Two freed Guantanamo prisoners face charges in Spain. At least they will have trials there.
To punish a person for being kidnaped by denying his residency rights seems entirely unjust.
Migrant farm workers in the US are still treated almost like slaves.
Sociological research produced a disturbing result: diversity within a community tends to reduce levels of civic participation and cooperation.
The question is, what does this imply for what we do? Conservatives wish to draw the conclusion that we should push everyone into a mold, but that is not necessarily indicated.
When the Bush regime tortured Abu Zubaydah, he talked, and plenty. He was going crazy, so he revealed lots of plots that seem to have been fictitious.
Since the information was not true, it would not have served the supposed purpose of thwarting plots. But it did serve Bush's purpose, giving him "evidence" to make Americans feel very scared of Al Qa'ida and thus support his plans to crush human rights.
The US adopted an energy law with some moves towards reducing carbon emission.
However, burning ethanol made from food is in itself a disaster, since it means higher prices for food even for poor people, uses (in the US) lots of fertilizer, and motivates cutting down rainforests.
Staff at the Guantanamo prison deleted information from Wikipedia entries about prisoners there.
Clegg, the courageous leader of the Liberal Democrats, has stated publicly that he is an atheist.
I also admire his refusal to talk about whether he had ever used illegal drugs.
I cannot make sense of the idea of agreeing to "raise children as Catholics" (or to believe in any other religious belief system) if you don't believe in it yourself. Isn't that in effect agreeing to mislead them? While marriage requires compromises, there are some compromises that one cannot properly make.
However, I will not hold this against him personally, since I'm sure he did it because it seems honorable to him.
Three prisoners were released from Guantanamo to the UK. One of them is blind in one eye as a result of torture.
Two were arrested and accused of terrorist activities. I am confident that the UK will not imprison them without a fair trial. However, the UK might punish them in lesser ways, such as permanent house arrest, without a trial. And it might try them for crimes which amount only to being the object of suspicion.
For one month:
US citizens: call your congresscritters and senators and say: Reverse the FCC's decision: reject increased media consolidation.
You can also sign this petition but phone calls carry more weight.
US citizens: call your senators and say "Don't let Richard Honaker become a Federal judge". Honaker wants to ban abortion entirely.
The Bush regime wants to intervene directly in promotions for military lawyers, to make sure they do not let integrity interfere with obedience.
All the Iraqi sectarian and ethnic groups agree on one thing: Bush is to blame for the horrible state of their country.
The Bush forces have the mission to find something they can present as progress, so they will use whatever comes up.
The christmas tree ornaments sold at Wal-Mart are made in Chinese sweatshops.
Celebrate Grav-mass instead; then you won't need metal or plastic ornaments for your tree, just apples.
Drug companies should not be allowed to fund studies of drug effects. Instead the government should tax them and use the tax money to do it. That way, the drug companies will not have any control over who gets chosen to do these studies.
An Indian school cook faces being fired because the children refuse to eat food cooked by a Dalit.
The EU plans to increase cod quotas even though its scientists say they need to be cut.
If we let the fishermen get their way, they will wipe out all the fish. Then they will all be out of a job, and we will have no fish. People have behaved stupidly like this before: they killed all the passenger pigeons in just a few years, and didn't trouble to spare the last flock.
US citizens: call your congresscritters and senators and say they should pass a law to apply US criminal law to US government contractors and their employees in foreign countries.
In a setback for science, MIT has appointed a chaplain.
The major Democratic candidates' debate in Iowa excluded Kucinich on rather absurd criteria. And the other candidates did not complain.
It's a particularly blatant example of how the major media, big businesses which work with other big businesses, control US elections. They may not decide precisely who wins, but they make sure nobody can win who wants to make changes that will affect the power of these big businesses. But denying coverage to candidates like Kucinich they can make them appear not to be "electable", which many voters then take to be a reason not to support them.
In effect, to make "electability" a criterion is to let the media decide for you.
I am skeptical that the situation is as favorable for Bush as it is presented in that article, but divide and conquer has worked for other empires in the past. If Bush's divide and conquer policy succeeds, these tribes would become the new local elite, working for Bush and getting paid a small fraction of the plunder that the megacorporations get, much as the Tikritis did for Saddam Hussein. What this cannot do is give freedom (in any sense we would understand) to Iraqis.
Israeli shelling continues to kill innocent Palestinians, such as children
Nonviolent Palestinian protestors are also attacked.
Building new coal-fired electric plants would ruin any chance of limiting global warming.
As the British Bush forces hand over control of Basra to Iraqi militias, most of the inhabitants consider this a step forward even though the militias sometimes fight and sometimes murder.
After new arrests, Israel now holds 46 members of the Palestinian Parliament in prison.
The "Iraqi" government says it doesn't want the Bush forces forever.
[I thought that previous statements about this would be reversed about not wanting permanent bases and making the Bush forces leave in a year or so.]
Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death
Killing prisoners is a crime no matter how they decide which prisoners to kill. And calling the resistance forces "terrorists" is a smear.
But notice how another evil is embodied here: "the computer (database) can't be wrong." If your biometrics are in the system, that means you're a member of the resistance, i.e. a "terrorist", and you can be executed summarily.
The nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan is extending to missile defense.
The US has found it hard to make missile defense really work. I won't assume that India can do better.
French senators have proposed a ban on biofuel that comes from crops such as palm oil.
Former CIA agent John Kiriakou confessed to torturing a prisoner. He has come to feel that what he did was wrong.
When tortured prisoners break down and start to talk, what they say may be true or it may be false.
New Jersey is about to abolish the death penalty.
This is one step towards taking the US out of barbarism.
The new Australian government has softened the country's cruel policy towards refugees.
Muslim fanatics in Iraq are murdering woman that don't wear the prison garb that their religion prescribes for women.
Disgusting as this is, it is no excuse for continuing the occupation of Iraq, because the Bush forces have no power to prevent it.
A substantial part of the Antarctic ice sheet is resting on rock 6,000 feet below sea level, and it is starting to get thinner.
Four species of penguins that breed in Antartica are endangered by global warming.
Even I, the only man in the world who can get angry from looking at a picture of a penguin, find this bad news.
Meanwhile, the Bush regime is determined to block efforts to limit global warming for as long as it can hang on.
Each day of sabotage brings us that much closer to disaster.
"Iraq calmer, but more divided".
The division of Iraq is similar to what I have proposed as the only way to end the civil war. The actual divisions don't have the stable governments and boundaries that I proposed. I am not sure whether they might have been possible under different circumstances, but the occupation by foreign troops that aim to steal Iraq's oil has to make it more difficult.
Germany proposed to ban the Church of Scientology on the grounds that it is a predatory cult masquerading as a religion.
The Church of Scientology is reported to persecute ex-members and those who criticize it. In Belgium, Scientology will be prosecuted for a wide range of crimes including blackmail and swindling.
Scientology also attacks your freedom by lobbying for increased copyright power. The 1998 US law that extended copyright by 20 years was named after one of the Church of Scientology's pet congressmen.
The CIA destroyed videotapes documenting interrogation of prisoners because they might have shown torture, which would have been a crime committed by the CIA agents.
Neocons are mounting a smear campaign against the intelligence report that said Iran stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Jamie Leigh was a Halliburton employee in Iraq when she was raped by other Halliburton employees. The company kept her prisoner and destroyed evidence. Because Bush set up Iraq as a law-free zone, neither the rapists nor the company can be prosecuted.
Bolivia is moving forward on its new constitution; the opposition, which represents the local elite who have generally ruled Bolivia in the past, is trying to make a fuss about the absence of presidential term limits.
Santa Cruz is the area where Bolivia's oil is located, and the oil industry has lots of political influence. I was told, there, that the oil industry pays people to protest.
Al Gore: My own country is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.
I think the rest of the countries should adopt a good plan, ignoring Bush and the Bushmen, and then announce that they don't care whether he signs up to it because his successor will.
If CO2 emissions are not checked, they will make most of the ocean uninhabitable for coral. Hundreds of millions of people could lose their livelihoods.
Also, thousands of other marine species that depend on coral reefs could go extinct as a result. Even if coral itself survives somewhere, these species are not necessarily found there.
The International Red Cross condemned Israel's clampdown on Gaza, which has crushed the economy and kills sick people.
Ironically, the only aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza that clampdown has not crushed is the missile attacks on Israel which are its supposed motive. But those attacks are so ineffectual that it would be better to ignore them anyway.
A Canadian study found that P2P music sharing leads people to buy more CDs — just the opposite of what the advocates of DRM claim.
Gary Kasparov had to give up on the Russian presidential election, because he and his supporters have been blocked from meeting so as to legally launch the campaign.
Gordon Clown is about to sign the EU constitution (which they do not recognize as a constitution). To deflect the criticism for this, he has rejected a symbolic call for further EU integration.
Talks between Israel and Palestinians started, and achieved nothing because Israel is continuing to build its colonies on Palestinian territory.
The environmental study of the Heathrow third runway drastically underestimated the climate change consequences (by 2/3).
A side effect of the UK's policy of unnecessary imprisonment is great expense. Because of the expense, they will make prisoners spend less time studying, exercising and working.
It's absurd penology.
The government of Afghanistan is negotiating with warlords that support the Taliban, trying to win them away.
The reason that the conquest of Afghanistan was so easy was that it's normal practice for warlords to switch sides.
The Iraqi government, in a show of independence, ordered policewomen to turn in their guns.
A national security advisor of the Iraqi government said no to permanent Bush bases there. It is not clear, however, who in the government that person speaks for.
The Bush forces have a history of making the Iraqi government back down if it tries to oppose what Bush wants.
CIA photos prove that Binyam Mohammed was tortured. The Bush regime is keeping him prisoner based on evidence obtained byt torture — and therefore likely to be false.
The reason torture is so good at making people confess is that people literally cannot resist. Guilty people cannot resist confessing, and innocent people can't either.
If you want lots of people to confess, and you don't care whether the confessions are true, torture is a great method.
US citizens: call your senators and say, "Support Senator Dodd's filibuster, and don't let the spying telcos off the hook in any manner."
See here for more info. A phone call carries more weight than a message.
Try: 202-224-3121 or 888-818-6641 or 888-355-3588 (Capitol Switchboards).
US citizens: phone your senators and say, "Don't cave in to Bush; don't make a deal to give him war funding with out withdrawal."
NATO troops in Afghanistan say they are clearing the Taliban out of an important stronghold.
I wish I could believe this is significant, but it is standard guerrilla practice to "melt away" from an area that comes under strong attack. That doesn't mean they have been defeated.
When a Western army's commanders speak of "winning the hearts and minds" of another people, what it shows is that they have a notable lack of support. Whether they have any chance of winning back that support is another question — it is much easier said than done.
I supported war against the Taliban before Bush talked about it, for other reasons, but I have to acknowledge that it is not going well. Could it have gone better if Bush had avoided attacking Iraq, and had put into Afghanistan 10% of what he has spent on Iraq? I don't know, but at least it is possible.
British Petroleum, which has spent millions on greenwashing, plans to develop oil shale extraction in Canada. Greenpeace plans to try to stop them.
With petroleum prices rising, and likely to rise further due to peak oil, getting oil from shale is becoming economically attractive. But that's only because they impose much of the cost on others. If the extraction plant had to pay the environment costs of the CO2 they emit, and of the local environmental damage they cause, the price would be much higher.
Iraqi refugees forced back from neighboring countries often cannot return to their own homes, so they become internal refugees instead.
Activists created an illegal "palestinian outpost" to mock the many illegal Israeli settler "outposts".
The police forcibly expelled the protestors from this outpost. They don't do that with the equally illegal settler outposts.
Meanwhile, Israel continues confiscating large areas of Palestinian land and forbidding Palestinians to build houses in their land.
Palestinians in Gaza are dying because Israel won't let them leave to get medical care.
Minors in Iraqi prisons suffer the same torture as adults.
Uri Avnery: How they stole the (Iranian) bomb from us.
Sign the petition calling on Israel to allow sick people in Gaza to travel to receive medical treatment.
An Israeli minister cancelled a visit to the UK because he feared being arrested for ordering a bombing that killed many civilians.
When [Iraqi] resistance leaders are given an assurance that the Iraq occupation will end completely, real negotiations can begin.
The US now has 2.4 million prisoners. One in every 31 adults is in prison, on parole, or on probation.
A shortage of sunspots could indicate the start of a temporary period of decreased in solar output.
If this comes to pass, it could give us a temporary respite from global warming — but not a solution. we do not dare relax and let CO2 emissions continue to rise, because whenever the solar output returns to normal, the present problem will return. Meanwhile, other problems of CO2 emissions, such as acidification of the ocean, will proceed unchecked.
US voters: support Dennis Kucinich in IndependentPrimary.com.
Iraqi refugees are returning to Iraq...on threat of being imprisoned until they do.
The UK has become the biggest imprisoner of Europe, much as the US is the biggest imprisoner of the world, and its only solution is to build more prisons.
Privatization of prisons tends to put the squeeze on prison conditions (since that enables the owners to increase the profits). It can also provide layers of deniability to help prison guards evade being held responsible for how the treat prisoners. It also tends to create a prison-industrial complex that bribes legislators to put more of the population behind bars.
"Rendition" did not begin with Bush. In 1908, the UK government wanted to hand over a Korean journalist to the Japanese, who wished to torture him. One man with integrity, diplomat Henry Cockburn, prevented this even though it ended his career.
The US Supreme Court is considering whether the l aw that denied the courts authority over Guantanamo prisoners is valid.
Prisoners have been held in Guantanamo for years based on no evidence except rumors — and all the while, both Bush and his men said these prisoners were so dangerous that it was inconceivable to release them.
A racist Italian politician called for punishing ten immigrants if one immigrant commits a crime. (He did not say how the nine innocent victims would be chosen.)
Italians need to recognize that their economic problems are due to the corporations that dominate their state through the European Union, not to the poor and weak.
Human Rights Watch called on Venezuela to investigate violence in the campaign over the constitutional referendum.
Sudan has freed the British teacher that was arrested for "insulting Islam", but has not changed its policy of punishing people for expressing such opinions.
I am glad Ms Gibbons is free, but she should stop fussing about whether she ever intended to insult anyone or anything, and start defending the human rights of the next victim. Sudan's law is an offense against freedom of speech, and the fact that they went lightly against Ms Gibbons is no excuse.
A US intelligence report says that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program 4 years ago in response to international pressure.
Bush must have known about this while trying to create excuses to attack Iran.
Greg Palast: Fear of Chavez is Fear of Democracy.
A novel is the latest attempt to bring attention back to the holes in the official story of what happened on 9/11.
MoveOn suggests calling your senators and representative to say, "Make sure Bush has no legal authority to attack Iran."
You can also use this site to send such a message, but phoning carries more weight.
Venezuelan voters rejected Chavez' proposal to change the constitution of Venezuela.
I'm disappointed that the elimination of "intellectual property" from the constitution was rejected, but that was a small issue compared with the others at stake.
This defeat is a powerful argument against opposition claims that Venezuelan votes are not counted correctly. If that were true, the cheaters would hardly have allowed such a tiny margin of defeat to stand.
However, computerized voting always offers the option of easy cheating. Chavez doesn't do it, but there is no telling what some future president might do. Venezuela should abolish computerized voting before it gets someone prepared to exploit the danger.
The OSCE denounced Putin's rigged election.
The Bush forces hold 1000 minors as prisoners.
The experience at Guantanamo shows we cannot believe the claims that the prisoners are all "bad guys". They said the same things about specific Guantanamo prisoners even when the evidence against them was close to zero; this is why they seek to deny prisoners real trials. We cannot believe the claims about these minors either.
Putin has had a smashing victory in an election that appears to have been rigged in many ways at once.
Now that Iraqi militias control Basra instead of the British Bush forces, security is no better, and apparently no worse either. Some are trying to use this as an argument to increase the UK participation in the occupation.
Olmert told Israelis not to hope for results from the Annapolis meeting.
The Earth's tropics, as defined by climatology, have expanded almost 200 miles at each border. This has caused spreading drought, and could cause positive feedback in global warming.
Meanwhile, Bush is trying to sabotage the negotiation of a new climate change treaty to follow the Kyoto accord, which he also sabotaged.
Uri Averny predicts the effects of the Annapolis meeting: the settlers knew they had nothing to fear, but Hamas fears the Israeli army will invade Gaza. Nonetheless, he believes, a small amount of momentum for peace may have been produced.
If the Israeli army does invade and conquer Gaza, either it will have to leave a permanent occupation by prison guards in its wake, or the invasion will have no lasting effect aside from the deaths it will cause.
Some Iraqi refugees are returning to Iraq. What does this mean?
Nonstop Theft and Bribery Are Staggering Iraq.
Yahoo demonstrates its contempt for freedom of speech.
This article uses the misleading propaganda terms "piracy" and "intellectual property". See Words to Avoid.
What these companies protest is probably copyright infringement. Since copyrights are totally different from patents and trademarks, lumping them together and calling them "intellectual property" distracts attention on what's important about them onto an abstract level where you can't even see the real issues. Calling sharing "piracy" is merely a smear campaign.
Americans' wasteful consumption of cotton is destroying the environment around the world.
Although Sharif and Bhutto are more democratic than Musharraf, Sharif supports Islamic extremists' demands, and all of them supported the Pakistani policies that created the Taliban.
The French embassy in Bangladesh participated in what looks like an attempt to smuggle ancient art from Bangladesh to France.
Both sides are equally in the wrong when they sqabble over who gets what share of a monopoly over photos of these ancient works. Photos should be published in the public domain.
The UK Labour Party's fundraiser is in trouble for accepting possibly illegal contributions. In 1998, Greg Palast caught him on tape proposing to help businesses buy laws.
Tell Nestle to stop using child labor.
Global warming has enabled chikungunya fever to spread in Italy. Dengue fever could be next.
Murder and payoffs taint business in Colombia (including that of global megacorporations such as Coca Cola and Chiquita).
ACLU Statement on the "Radicalization and Terrorism Prevention" bill.
MPP: The DEA is waging war on California.
US citizens: phone Senate Majority Leader Reid and say, no amnesty for the phone companies that spied on us.
Musharraf promised to end the state of emergency within two weeks.
Sudan gave teacher Gillian Gibbons a short jail sentence. The government must hope that its mercy in not subjecting her to the whip will distract international public opinion from Sudan's disrespect for freedom of speech.
Limiting the expression of unpopular views is exceedingly dangerous. Even cruel and odious views, such as Nazism, Christianity, and Islam, must not be censored.
Nicholas Stern says his Stern Review of global warming was too conservative; we already know it's worse than was proposed.
The Turkish publisher of The God Delusion faces prosecution for "insulting believers".
Turkey is a "moderate" Muslim country, but it does not respect the freedom to criticize the opinions and theories which constitute Islam.
When religious believers complain that their views have been criticized, and ask us to be "sensitive" by hushing up views they don't like, we must give them no comfort. They have to learn to live with criticism of their views just like everyone else.
A week before UK police shot and killed de Menezes, they came close to killing Nicholas Gaubert. They thought he as a terrorist because he looked strange and didn't respond to questions. Gaubert didn't respond to them because he was in a diabetic coma.
The Sa'udi rape victim's tale.
The Sa'udi government is trying to claim that she had an affair with the man who invited his friends to rape her. Even if it were true, it would not excuse what they did to her, but the attitude of men is that if a woman doesn't fit their definition of virtue, she's fair game for violence.
Sa'udi Arabia is not the only place where many men have such an attitude.
US citizens: sign MoveOn's petition against permanent occupation of Iraq.
Bush signed an agreement with al Maliki to keep the Bush forces in Iraq for many years.
Now he will claim that "we promised Iraq" to continue to the occupation and subjugation of Iraq.
Musharraf stepped down as the head of Pakistan's army. However, the state of emergency continues and he shows no sign of undoing his appointment of toadies as judges.
A Victory for Ehren Watada -- and for Freedom of the Press.
Democrats (except for Kucinich) are going along with permanent occupation of Iraq on the imperialist grounds of "protecting" the flow of diminishing quantities of oil from the Middle East.
Foreign imperial rule is not necessary for "protecting" the flow of oil, even that could justify conquest and occupation.
The best way to assure availability of Middle East oil is to stop creating conflict with Iran, and let the Iraqis divide Iraq with permanent defended frontiers between the ethnic groups.
The opposition in Bolivia has blocked the development of a new constitution and launched massive battles with police.
As 1/4 of the veterans of the first Gulf war have chronic mysterious health problems, it is clear there is some sort of Gulf War Syndrome, but the US government gives the problem more lip service than action.
On the other hand, how could the government afford to take care of veterans while launching expensive wars of occupation?
Sarko's bad decisions, and past police lies, have come home to roost in rioting Paris suburbs.
Global warming is not just where we are headed. It has already caused disasters for tens of millions of people in areas poor.
Disaster may be coming soon to richer places too, as many parts of the world are facing droughts that may be semipermanent. What will happen when the population of Atlanta has to migrate to survive?
Remember the 1930s dust bowl?
Rather than admit the failure of the Annapolis meeting, Bush had Olmert and Abbas say, "Give us one more year and then judge the results." Conveniently that's after the next US election.
Maybe Bush will let this quietly fade away, so that a year from now its failure will not be noticed.
A new campaign is trying to reduce the power of the drug companies to make medicine so expensive that millions of people in poor countries will die. Of course, the US government is fights this tooth and nail.
To succeed, in the long term, these activists need to denounce and reject the term "intellectual property", whose bias and confusion undermines their efforts.
US citizens: call your senators' offices to oppose S 1959 which could make it easy for the government to prosecute people for "promoting an extremist belief system".
That ought to be unconstitutional, but you can't trust today's Supreme Court to defend any sort of human rights.
The ACLU agrees that this bill is a threat to freedom of speech.
This article explains the main ideas of Chavez's proposed constitutional reform.
The reform also includes a change in article 98 to eliminate the term "intellectual property" which was inspired by my criticism of the term.
However, there are also parts in which I see a danger, such as the increases in numbers of signatures needed for initiatives and recalls, and the relaxation of rules about a state of emergency.
Holocaust-denier David Irving gave a speech at Oxford despite great pressure to cancel his speech.
I think his views are wrong, but I support his right to state them. If the world lets Bush give speeches, Irving is nothing by comparison.
Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister of Pakistan, returned from exile and held a rally with supporters even as Musharraf's police tried to keep them away.
Muslim fanatics attacked Taslima Nasrin's house and forced her to flee from Kolkata to Rajasthan, where she was once again chased out.
To blame Nasrin for the insane hate that religious fanatics feel towards her is not merely injust, it encourages and supports the fanatics.
Meanwhile, in Sudan, other Muslim fanatics demonstrated the cruel spirit of their religion by threatening a teacher with flogging after she let her students name a teddy bear "Mohammad".
Whether or not Nasrin said the Koran should be changed, I will say that it should be discarded and forgotten. (The Koran was changed plenty during the first centuries of Islam, according to evidence presented in Why I Am Not a Muslim, by Ibn Warraq.)
Guyana offers to trade the permanent protection of its rainforest for development aid.
Europe could produce clean electricity with a network of wind power stations connected by HVCD power lines.
The director of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History ordered last-minute changes in an exibit about global warming to present an impression of uncertainty.
The loss of copies of several databases about citizens has reinvigorated the opposition to the UK's planned data base holding personal information about all children.
I think the real purpose of that database is just to make it impossible for future generations to stay out of the ID card data base.
Weather-related disasters have increased from 120 a year in the 1980s to 500 a year now. Global warming is a principal reason.
Increased human population is also a reason, as people move into unsafe areas.
General Sanchez, who formerly commanded the Bush forces, gave his support to a bill to speed their removal from Iraq.
A UK police chief dared to note that post-puberal females, age 13 and up, are not accurately labeled as children.
Note the absurdity of response that tries to define the limits of sexual normality based on the current requirements of UK law. It's almost as absurd as trying to legislate the value of pi.
Russian police arrested Kasparov for a peaceful protest.
A Yale economist predicts a recession. Is the recession an intentional plan to transfer wealth to the rich? Internal documents suggest that it is.
When artist Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes asked why Seattle police were beating up his friend, they beat him up too. Now Alley-Barnes is suing the city.
Hirsi Ali had to return to the Netherlands, where she is given police protection from death threats from Islamic extremists.
(Hirsi Ali is a prominent critic of the cruelty of Islam.)
The American Enterprise Institute is a right-wing ``think tank'' that hires itself out to companies, providing ``studies'' to support what those companies want. For instance, it has been paid to produce materials to oppose free software. I hope it won't undermine her conscience.
Volunteers in Iraq bury hundreds of unclaimed, unidentified bodies every month.
After reading this, I have a suggestion: to denounce the term "piracy" as a propaganda smear when applied to copying and sharing. (See words to avoid.)
A crucial part of rejecting the term is never using the term yourself. Another crucial part is explaining frequently that it is propaganda, that you reject it, and that that is why you don't use it.
Global warming has already caused devastating destruction of soft corals. In some places, 95% are gone.
The tree damage caused by Hurricane Katrina is releasing enough CO2 to make a substantial contribution to global warming.
Since global warming causes more hurricanes, and more severe hurricanes, this is a positive feedback system.
The Bush regime is trying to pin a Baghdad bombing on Iran.
John Ging, UNRWA's director for Gaza, asked the UK Parliament to put pressure on Israel to end the blockade of Gaza.
Cities in England threated legal action against Heathrow Airport expansion.
The Dalai Lama has announced plans to appoint a successor, thus denying China the chance to put in its own man as the next Dalai Lama.
The British Commonwealth has suspended Pakistan due to Musharraf's state of emergency.
Amazon's e-book device means an ugly future for book lovers.
Greenpeace says that Clown's "public consultation" about extending Heathrow airport is bogus "collusion".
Musharraf has started releasing some important prisoners including Imran Khan.
60% of the population of Somalia has fled the violence that grows out of the Bush-arranged Ethiopian intervention in Somalia.
Israel has eased the blockade of Gaza.
I wonder how long this will last.
The Taliban may have regained half of Afghanistan.
This is the result of Bush's invasion of Iraq.
Clown allowed one Burmese dissident asylum in the UK, but has refused to generalize the practice to other Burmese dissidents.
Musharraf says he is releasing a few prisoners. Meanwhile he is arresting lots more.
The lawyers correctly focus on the replacement of judges with toadies who could, as Bush has demonstrated, easily make the coming elections meaningless.
US citizens: tell your senators to oppose the plan to make car fuel economy standards meaningless by allowing easy exceptions.
Fine-tuning the propaganda to make Americans support attacking Iran.
Scott McClellan, former Bush press secretary, says that Bush together with Cheney and Rove lied to him so he would misinform the public.
Over 1/6 of the population of New York City can't afford enough food. Nationwide, over 30 million Americans went hungry due to poverty last year.
This is what comes of letting business (and this indirectly the rich people who mostly own businessses) take power away from the citizens in general.
Clown's ministers approved expansion of Heathrow airport to handle 500 more flights per day. Since there is a lot of opposition, they are already planning to change laws to make sure the public can't stop this project.
The spread of AIDS is slowing down due to massive efforts, but there is a danger that governments will slack off those efforts just when we could turn the corner.
I wonder if the IMF is trying to make governments cut back on this spending, as it does with many other government programs that make life better for the public.
A sad and unnecessary mistake: trying to "balance" the interests of preserving fish stocks with the "interests of the fishing industry".
It's a fundamental mistake to frame the issue that way, because the long term interests of the fishing industry, as well as those of people who eat fish, are completely aligned with preservation. The only thing on the other side is the short-term interest of the fishing industry, and if they are foolish enough to prefer the short term over the long term, we must refuse to listen.
I've been told that the Grand Banks cod fishery is not entirely closed, and this may be why it does not recover.
A breakthrough that converts skin cells into stem cells might eliminate the issue about getting stem cells from embryos.
I wonder if this will also make it possible to clone a person from skin cells. (That will surely be possible some day.)
Americans say, when polled, that they a prefer president who will end the occupation of Iraq immediately.
It is paradoxical that Democratic voters don't translate this into practice by supporting Dennis Kucinich. I think the reason is that primary voters think they need to choose a candidate who "can win", and if they don't hear much about a candidate, they assume he "can't win". By not talking about Kucinich, the media can lead most voters to exclude him from consideration.
B'liar has set up some plans for economic growth in Palestine.
This will somewhat help with the poverty of Palestinians, but at best it will slightly reduce the suffering of the occupation.
Penal researchers say the US imprisons too many people for too long.
Info on the JFA Institute.
Imran Khan started a hunger strike demanding Musharraf restore an independent judiciary.
Musharraf replaced the Supreme Court with toadies who will do what he tells them to do, sort of like the ones who enabled Bush to steal the 2000 election.
The UK is experimenting with an intelligent approach to heroin, imitating Switzerland, and the results are very good.
The Netherlands uses a somewhat similar approach, where addicts can get heroin in doctors' offices. It has kept the number of addicts low, and reduces robbery.
Japan's whaling plans have prompted many people to boycott Japanese products. (Search for "have your say" in the article.)
Since most Japanese oppose whaling, I wonder if we can find a way to put on pressure on Japanese business and government that would reach out to Japanese individuals rather than make them identify with the targets of the pressure. If you have an idea, please write to me at rms using the site gnu dot org.
The "Iraqi" government arrested some mercenaries who has shot a bystander.
I doubt that the "Iraqi" government is independent enough to get away with such a thing. I expect that Bush will make it back down.
The IPCC's report on climate change reflects increasing certainty among scientists that human activity is causing global warming, and also about the damage it will do.
Japan intends to resume killing of humpback whales, and calls Greenpeace "violent terrorists".
As far as I know, Greenpeace has never done anything that harmed a person; it was once a victim of terrorism, when French agents sank the ship Rainbow Warrior and killed some of its crew. The Japanese captain's statement appears to imitate equally dishonest statements by Bush and B'liar about "terrorism".
A UK program for renewable energy was so successful that B'liar cut it in half.
The US asked Musharraf to end the state of emergency, and he refused, knowing that the US doesn't dare put any pressure on him.
Pakistanis were irrationally proud that their country had nuclear weapons. Ultimately they have enabled Musharraf to defeat the Pakistani people.
Congressional democrats are starting to show some resistance to the occupation of Iraq. They have not been persuaded to agree to pass a bill to fund it.
Antiwar activists in Olympia, Washington, have persistently blocked movement of war supplies.
Uri Avnery: Bush, Olmert and Abbas hoped to make the Annapolis meeting a nice show, since there's no hope of an agreement, but now it is doubtful they can even achieve that.
A noted expert says that NATO cannot win in Afghanistan and the Bush forces cannot win in Iraq.
He predicts it will be impossible to end the occupation of Iraq — not militarily impossible, just politically impossible. It is the moral duty of Americans to disprove this prediction.
The London Council rejected the plan to prohibit giving food to the homeless.
I don't know whether the year-long study will do any good, but even if it is an excuse to do nothing, that is better than the evil plan that was proposed.
Robert Dziekanski was killed by police with a taser on arriving in Canada, where he was to be a legal immigrant.
It sounds like the police had good reason to intervene, but since he did not threaten anyone, they had no reason to use a weapon on him.
China is making great progress in renewable energy, although still not enough to reduce it CO2 emissions.
Gaza's strawberry crop will rot, since Israel won't let it out for sale in Europe. This is collective punishment at work.
The Southern Company seems to have paid Bush to continue global warming.
A web site with thousands of musical scores, all in the public domain in Canada, was shut down by a foreign music publisher with a nonsensical threat to apply European law.
B'liar says he was personally in favor of invading Iraq, and never tried to convince Bush not to invade.
An Australian was falsely suspected of terrorism for reading a book called The Unknown Terrorist, which is about an Australian who was falsely suspected of terrorism for equally absurd reasons.
The book, when published, was accused of exaggerating. Its author cites these events as vindication.
The drought in the Southeast US is becoming a catastrophe. If it continues, Atlanta may have no drinking water by January. The foolish, unheeding businesses there make a profligate waste of the regions water, even as they buy candidates and keep global warming going.
When the results cause disaster for Atlanta, will some of those companies be wiped out? It may be too much to hope for.
Emission impossible: Why Hollywood is one of the worst polluters.
Musharraf says he will step down "when there is no turmoil in Pakistan".
How about "When hell freezes over"?
Pressing Musharraf to "hold elections soon" sounds good, but doesn't really mean anything. Elections held under his state of emergency won't be fair.
The Bush regime is leaning on intelligence interrogators to slant intelligence against Iran, says one of interrogators.
The regime apparently does not ask individual interrogators to intentionally fabricate false intelligence. That isn't necessary, because the system produces equivalent results. It encourages other people to provide fabricated intelligence, and encourages agents to forward it up the chain and believe it. It also tends to shut off intelligence that would cast doubt on their claims.
Thus, we should not trust or believe whatever the Bush regime may say that likes a reason for war with Iran.
The "Iraqi" government has formally incorporated thousands of Badr brigade militiamen into its "security" forces.
The Badr brigades are the ones generally considered responsible for grabbing Shi'ites on the street by the dozens to kill them, and for torture.
The UK's highest court approved deporting Darfuris to the refugee camps in Khartoum.
The US joins China and Iran in trying to block the UN Human Rights Commission from voting for a moratorium on the death penalty.
I don't have a complete list of the countries opposing the resolution, but all those mentioned in the article seem to be guilty of general disrespect for human rights. It is a travesty to have countries such as China, Iran and the US in a Human Rights Commission.
Imran Khan, Pakistani member of parliament, was arrested and accused of "terrorism".
This once again illustrates how dangerous and dishonest "anti-terrorism" laws are. In the UK, they have been used more against protestors than against anyone planning what we would normally call terrorism. In the US, people have been convicted of "animal rights terrorism" for running a web site that described actions taken against companies that do experiments on animals.
(Il)legal bullying shut down the main source of public domain musical scores on the Internet.
The Liberal Democratic Party has attacked Clown's refusal to rule out joining Bush in attacking Iran.
The US Senate has adopted the weakest version global warming bill. Its sponsor, Senator Lieberman, is paying his electric company bill.
The proposed London ban on giving free food to homeless people is meeting condemnation.
Wealthy, comfortable people who seek to hurt the homeless to avoid minor inconvenience show themselves to be heartless and despicable. If you know any clergy in London, how about suggesting they choose this topic for a sermon.
Every pack of cigarettes smoked in the US has 7 dollars in indirect costs. Only a little of this goes to the tobacco industry, but it is still enough for them to defeat tax increases with massive PR.
German Chancellor Merkel is running into trouble with her "reforms" designed to reduce the standard of living for German workers.
The "competitive economy" that business wants to "drag" Germany into is the one in which countries compete in letting business treat workers worse. This kind of competition is bad for everyone (except business owners) and we need to put an end to it.
Imran Khan, former Pakistani cricket star turned politician, calls for a student uprising against Musharraf.
Many cities are banning stores from handing out plastic bags.
That still leaves many layers of packaging in the products themselves. One store is trying to avoid that too.
Hamas fighters shot indiscriminately at civilians at a rally of Fatah-sympathizers in Gaza, after some of the participants threw rocks at them, and killed several of them.
This practice is more often associated with Israelis and Americans, but it is a human problem and people of any group can do it.
Only 13% of the original Tasmanian forest is left, but the government of Australia wants to reduce this to 6%, and undermined its environmental laws to make this happen.
How Clinton paved the way for dictatorship in Pakistan for the sake of some corporate cronies.
Sarkozy's attempt to cut back on pensions in France has triggered a broad wave of strikes.
We should not take up Sarkozy's propaganda terms, such as calling his supporters "New France". Saying "We are the future, our opponents are the past" is a standard propaganda technique which is devoid of meaning.
Others have begun to say that Sarkozy is Bush's new poodle. So now he has a French poodle — how appropriate.
November 16 was "orange alert" day. Wear orange to show you're against Bush's fearmongering and aggression.
A fairly high officer in the "Iraqi" police is accused of maintaining a cache of arms for the Iraqi resistance.
Thus, not everyone in the "Iraqi" police is a traitor for Bush.
Uri Avnery believes Bush will invade Iran because he is starting to look ridiculous.
An international BBC poll finds people are ready to make sacrifices to reduce global warming — more ready than their governments.
I speculate that businesses are not ready to sacrifice profits to reduce global warming, and that the government officials obey business rather than citizens. If this is true, the undermining of democracy by business could by the direct cause of world-wide disaster.
Increases in US wildfires have been tied to global warming.
Aid agencies struggle to support over two million displaced Iraqis.
The "Iraqi" government is paying monthly salaries to 17,000 sham names, says its anti-corruption board.
However, given the level of poverty and unemployment in Iraq, this may not really be a bad thing, especially if the money comes from the Bush regime.
Global warming combined with overconsumption of water are turning large parts of China into desert.
London's police commissioner tried to obstruct an inquiry into the police killing of de Menezes.
For that alone, he should be dismissed. Badges must not give police immunity.
Europe's agricultural subsidy is supposed to enable family farms to get by, but in fact the main beneficiaries are rich landowners. Now there is a plan to reduce the payments for large estates.
This change is a good first step, but a large fraction of this program would continue to support the rich. They shuld cut it further.
Musharraf has made a vague promise of elections by Feb 15, but is still trying to get away with replacing the Supreme Court with his own compliant judges. And still arresting political opposition leaders and human rights defenders.
2000 Palestinians, refugees from Iraq, are caught at the Syrian border.
Some have serious medical problems and have no medical care.
A Bush forces sniper is on trial for murdering Iraqis. He accuses superiors of ordering him to place arms as bait, but the Bush forces have decided to keep the evidence secret, so that we cannot tell if these orders existed.
Such orders ought not to change the verdict, since "I was just following orders" is no excuse. What the orders might do is inculpate the superiors who gave them — which is more important than convicting the triggerman.
Normally, those accused of a crime must be presumed innocent unless proved guilty, but that cannot include officials that use government power to block the investigation of the crime. When they do this, we must presume them guilty unless and until they allow a proper investigation.
In 1956 the British government lied to cover up a frogman's death while he was investigating visiting Russian warships. The explicit instructions for these lies are now known, and B'liar regime statements about complicity in US torture flights look quite similar.
J.K. Rowling and her publisher have got another injunction. This one blocks publication of a reference book about Harry Potter's world.
I called on people not to buy Harry Potter books after their previous injunction, which ordering people who had bought the books not to read their copies.
The words "Intellectual property rights or copyright" remind me of a sign that once graced a store in Cambridge: "We serve food and Greek subs."
"Intellectual property" isn't a law. It is just a vague way of confusing various unrelated laws, copyright law being one. (Others include patent law and trademark law.) These laws have essentially nothing in common, but plaintiffs' lawyers lump them together as "intellectual property". They do this to demonize the defendant and to distract attention from what specific laws actually require. With the real information concealed by that term, we can only guess what (if anything) the suit is about, aside from copyright law.
To promote clear thinking, let's avoid the propaganda term "intellectual property".
US citizens: phone your senators' offices and tell them to make sure the Energy Bill supports wind and solar power, not nuclear and fossil fuels.
You can also use this page to send your message, but phone calls have more effect.
A substantial part of biodiesel fuel is made from palm oil. To produce palm oil, farmers are using peat swamps in Indonesia, dumping lots of CO2 into the air. The result constitutes 4% of the world's greenhouse gases.
In other words, biodiesel is more dangero