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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
I have seen video so violent that it repelled me. (Some of it was sexual, some was not — it's a minor detail.) I hope to avoid seeing any more of it, but I condemn this attempt to censor it.
The Clown regime is planning to prohibit the mere possession of "extreme pornography". The excuse is that one man who liked violent pornography committed crime.
It is true that victims of real violence suffer. (Never mind that in making movies of violence, typically nobody is actually hurt.) The true oppressive spirit of this law starts to show in the prohibition of images of sex with corpses. Are we supposed to believe that corpses can suffer? Or are some cruel prudes trying to impose their prejudices by force?
The prohibition on images of sex with animals is also wrong. Some animals like sex with humans—male dophins are quite enthusiastic, and male dogs seem to like it too. Should you be imprisoned for taking pictures when a dog humps your leg? The parrot that made love to me in the Jurong Bird Park did so of his own free will. (I would never have dared to ask.) Is this photo going to be a crime?
The crimes committed by the occasional pervert are nothing against the crimes committed by B'liar in Iraq. So if they want to prohibit video that inspires violence, it would make more sense to go after war movies.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law gives protection to corporate whistleblowers, but Bush's Labor Department has effectively made it nothing.
An Indian Dalit woman died in the hospital because high caste doctors refused to treat her.
Over 12,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan a year have tried to commit suicide, but the Veterans Administration said it was under 800.
The Bush forces appear to be dropping cluster bombs on Baghdad.
This violates a treaty, but Bush doesn't care about adhering to treaties, except for treaties like NAFTA which allow him to say that the US has "promised" to mistreat its own people.
There is a lot to criticize about the ways Russia and China restrict their citizens, but the Bush regime is much more concerned when they fail to restrict their citizens.
Ever since Clinton, the US government has had no real interest in how other governments treat human rights. It has used its influence and power to prevent copying. It is most against commercial copying, but it tries to prevent the public from sharing also.
Canadians! Protest at the Public Policy Forum's push for unjust copyright law in your country.
I don't know which city this event is in, because I know only what it says in that article. But you can find out where it is. Print copies of that article (50 copies would be good) so you can hand them out to people that attend, especially media.
The TV networks have said nothing about the way the Pentagon's group of "military experts" fooled them. Perhaps because it was illegal for the Pentagon to do this.
"Bio-plastic" bags are supposedly biodegradable, but in landfills they either do not degrade or they produce methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.
I wonder what happens to them in the ocean? If they do degrade naturally there, they would reduce the plastic bag pollution that kills marine life.
But there is also the problem that this plastic is made by growing corn, and thus competes with making food.
China says it will meet with representatives of the Dalai Lama. However, any agreement is unlikely.
When China says it is willing to meet with him if he renounces violence and Tibetan independence, this is just part of a persisent campaign to misrepresent where the Dalai Lama stands. He champions nonviolence, and abandoned independence as the goal many years ago.
Warnings that someone might try violence are a standard excuse nowadays for suppressing protests or driving them to obscure locations where they can easily be ignored. We saw that practice at the US political conventions in 2004, and will probably see it again this summer.
Why did the Bush regime start talking about the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, after months of stonewalling? Some suggest this is a ploy by some officials to derail talks with North Korea.
Police in New York who shot and killed an unarmed man on the street have been acquitted of all charges.
If the events happened as the police described them, then this verdict would be justified. But I don't trust what they say, because lying in court is standard practice for police. (See many previous pol notes.)
The UN agency that feeds the Palestinians of Gaza is about to suspend deliveries for lack of fuel. Fuel delivery in Gaza is crippled because the workers are on strike, since Israel won't let them have fuel to deliver.
Mugabe's police raided the opposition headquarters and arrested everyone there.
Scott Ritter thinks the Syrian building that Israel bombed was a nuclear reactor, but without the facilities to extract plutonium for making bombs. He also points out that Israel violated international law, while Syria had not violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
A student confronted Ashcroft with the war-crimes conviction of a Japanese soldier for waterboarding. Ashcroft responded with quibbles.
What struck me about this is that Ashcroft designs his words as soundbites, intending them to be absorbed without thought or context. This is clearest when he says "They can't see either" about the students protesting with bags over their heads. The fact that they cannot see is irrelevant to anything, but it takes a few seconds' thought for a person to recognize that. Ashcroft hopes that his audience won't think about his words even that long.
China sent a ship full of arms to Mugabe's dictatorship, but workers refused to unload it, so the arms could not be delivered.
The Bush regime claims that Israel bombed an unfinished Syrian nuclear plant intended to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. A congressman said he does not trust the Bush regime on such questions.
At the same time, Syria says that Turkish mediation has created a possibility of peace between Syria and Israel.
I wonder if the two are related.
The Bliar/Clown regime has a policy that it can freeze someone's assets without trial, by arbitrary order. A judge ruled that this policy is illegal because Parliament never approved it.
If Parliament approves this, that won't make it legitimate. Confiscating someone's money on the mere order of an official is always an injustice.
Pro-business Western politicians are trying to placate China over the protests that their people are making.
The idea that China might abandon its policy of "engaging the West" is an absurdity, given how much Chinese business profits from that. China is now Capitalist, not Communist, even though this has not changed much in terms of freedom.
India's ban on testing the sex of fetuses has proved ineffective, to the point where tougher laws are being proposed to try to stop the practice.
The reasoning behind this prohibition is fallacious.
The desire to abort female fetuses reflects a social prejudice against women. I agree with Indian feminists that this prejudice is cruel and groundless. However, banning the symptom will not get rid of the prejudice.
The lower number of females will mean that many men cannot marry and will have no children. The end result will be less population growth in the future, and that is very very important.
The workers on Irish Ferries are paid low wages and are forbidden to go ashore. That's because these boats (which travel between Ireland and Britain) are officially registered in Cyprus.
The Mahdi Army says that the Bush forces killed 800 people, mostly civilians, in Sadr City.
In Boston on April 30: Benefit Concert for the Children of Gaza.
Iraqis see the US Embassy as the castle of the occupiers.
Some US stores have started limiting large purchases of rice because not enough is available.
Any further WTO agreement is to be feared as long as the rich country governments have more negotiating power, and use it on behalf of their corporate masters.
In the specific area of food, the reason there has been no agreement is that the rich countries refuse to drop their subsidies to agribusiness. Many poor countries have mostly stopped producing food because their farmers could not compete with the subsidized imports from the US. (One thing Chavez has done in Venezuela was to support a renewal of food production there.)
Perhaps the increased prices will restore food production around the world. Eliminating the subsidies would still be desirable for other reasons (we could use the money subsidize wind power, etc., instead).
However, the next worry is that food production will be limited by availability of land, water, or fertilizer made from petroleum. We need to stop human population growth.
Bush and the presidents of Mexico and Canada are meeting quietly with their masters planning how to weaken safety standards and allow China to export through duty-free through Mexico.
Police are accustomed to feeling they are above the law: attack people on the street, they lie in court, and they park in no parking zones and assume that their "brothers" won't give them tickets. However, one cop just discovered that he may not be immune from parking fines.
I am not a zealot for the enforcement of parking regulations, but I enjoy seeing cops get the treatment they usually think they should only dish out.
I've been saying ever since 2001 that a government that doesn't respect human rights is more dangerous than underground terrorists. Now we can demonstrate this with figures.
Under 3,000 Americans were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Over 4,000 Americans have been killed in the conquest and occupation of Iraq, and that doesn't count the many wounded, or the loss of freedom we have all suffered. The supposed reasons for this war were lies, so nothing excuses the harm it does. Thus, even for Americans, Bush is the worst enemy.
It's true in the UK too. 52 Britons were killed by terrorist attacks, while 176 were killed in the occupation of Iraq, not to count the wounded or the loss of freedom that all Britons have suffered.
The conquest of Iraq has imposed much greater suffering on Iraq; Bush and his cronies are responsible for all of that, since it was their crime that caused it. My point is that Bush is worse even without counting this.
Investigating the Pentagon's pet pundits.
The corruption of Earth Day into a marketing event is the result of a persistent long-term business PR campaign.
The capitalist will sell you the planet he (and the rest of his species) are living in.
When Kenya abolished the school fees that had been imposed by the IMF, 1 million poor children started attending school.
Additional "skeptics" about global warming have been outed as being on the PR industry's payroll.
Businesses such as Wal-mart pretend to be green while lobbying against laws to protect the environment.
Mugabe's men are doing a partial recount of the election, in districts where the opposition won, and seem to be trying to use it to cheat.
The Miss Landmine beauty contest highlights what landmines do to civilians.
Most countries are ready to ban landmines. Guess which one obstructs it?
The scandal of corporate media "military experts", managed by the Pentagon and paid by the military-industrial complex, is part of a campaign organized by Reagan and continued by George I to revive the US appetite for foreign wars.
Arizona is considering a vague bill that would cut off funding to schools that "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" or "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance.
I support democracy, pluralism, and religious tolerance, but I find it dangerous to support them in this way. The way that quotes were taken out of context to misrepresent the Raza program suggests that this is a plan to do wrong.
As for capitalism, that isn't a value, it is merely one method that can be used to organize an activity. Sometimes it provides good results, and sometimes bad results. Elevating it to a "value" is a mistake.
After talking with Jimmy Carter, Hamas announced its willingness to accept and live by a peace agreement with Israel if the Palestinians clearly accept it.
By Israel's response to this, we can measure whether Israel's government wants peace.
Gordon Clown's regime in the UK has given the Bush regime real time access to spy on cars on the highways of the UK.
Paraguay has elected a moderate leftist president.
It remains to be seen how much he will resist the bullying of the US. Arguing with Brazil about who gets how much money from the Itaipu dam will not build unity.
The guards at Guantanamo appear to have destroyed video evidence of their torture activities.
This would appear to be a criminal act in its own right. But will they be prosecuted? Surely not by Bush; he won't even prosecute the male contractors that rape female contractors in Iraq.
The wives of imprisoned Cuban dissidents held a protest in Havana. The police arrested them.
Al Sadr threatened open war against the occupiers.
The ocean has become less effective at absorbing CO2 since 10 years ago. This will make future global warming even worse than expected.
Global warming is causing bigger storms at sea.
The "military experts" that provide "analysis" on US were systematically recruited as mouthpieces by the Bush regime, and many are paid by its corporate cronies. Now the details of how this was done have been exposed.
When I read about the tours that were used to feed these "analysis" biased information, they remind me of the way the Soviet Union used to do the same thing.
One of the people carrying the Olympic torch in San Francisco pulled out a small Tibetan flag. Chinese and US police attacked her.
This must be what Peter Ueberroth calls an "exhilarating experience".
Israel arrested an important Palestinian non-violent activist, accusing him of being a "terrorist", but with no evidence for the claim.
According to Patrick Cockburn, al Sadr wants to make a common front with Sunnis to expel the Bush army of occupation, but the Sunni militias, now getting support from the Bush regime, would rather reconquer the parts of Baghdad that Shi'ites took over.
If they think Bush will support them while they do that, they are fools; what he wants above all is an appearance of peace in Iraq and especially in Baghdad. They ought to join with al Sadr.
Reagan's appointees destroyed the CIA's commitment to objective analysis, and converted it into a tool for fabricating support for political goals. Bush took advantage of this when fabricating excuses to conquer Iraq.
US citizens: support the Responsible Plan for ending the occupation of Iraq.
The goal of restoring Iraq's unity may be unachievable, but I see no harm in trying, as long as failure in that goal is not allowed to derail the rest.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on the major presidential candidates to talk with Hamas.
John McCain's New Economic Advisor Is an 'Innovator' at Hurting Workers.
In Basra, women face danger everywhere, and can be imprisoned by their husbands if they demand a divorce.
The Bush forces' invasion is responsible for this, but I think there is no way to undo what has been done. Certainly the continued Bush occupation does nothing about this problem.
Israel continues expansion of its colonies in the West Bank, showing contempt for the idea of peace with Palestinians.
The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff says he was kept in the dark about torture practiced in Guantanamo. He believed that the Geneva Conventions were still being followed.
The other injustice of Guantanamo, aside from torture, is that people have been imprisoned for long periods without trial.
The Bush regime twists language to deny that torture is torture.
After World War II, the US executed Japanese soldiers as war criminals for waterboarding American troops.
A Pentagon institute calls the Iraq war `a major debacle'.
This story gives a false figure for the number of civilians killed in Iraq. The figure obviously comes from Iraq Body Count, but that organization does not claim its count represents all the civilians killed. It represents only the deaths that IBQ can identify and verify. The total must be considerably more. The best estimate for the total of Iraqi civilians killed is around a million.
Those who want to keep the Bush forces in Iraq always say that Iraq's civil war would get worse without them. It might get worse or it might get better, no one can say. A couple of weeks ago the "Iraqi" forces (filled with the Badr brigades of SCIRI) fought with the Mahdi Army in Basra. The Bush forces supported this attack. Without Bush and his arms, money and troops to back them up, they would not have tried it.
I suggest resolving Iraq's future by inviting al Sadr, the anti-al-Qa'ida Sunni groups, the Kurds to work it out, offering withdrawal of the Bush forces as the carrot if they reach an agreement. The negotiations could be in Switzerland, and representatives of Indonesia (mostly Muslim, distant, and moderate) might be able to help them reach agreement.
YouTube suspended the accounts of two anti-Scientology activists without even notifying them, and refuses to explain why.
This makes two reasons why using YouTube to post videos is a bad thing:
1. Because YouTube only distributes them in Flash, and free software support for Flash is impeded by software patents.
2. Because that gives YouTube a lot of power.
Any web site can host videos, so post them yourself in Ogg Theora format.
Chinese people who got HIV from blood transfusions were arrested when they tried to meet with Premier Wen Jiabao.
Why didn't the New York Times cover the Winter Soldier events of the Iraq Veterans Against the War? It offers bad excuses.
India applied crushing security to the Olympic torch ceremony, turning it into a shabby failure and bringing shame on itself.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the "Personal Use of Marijuana...Act of 2008."
Unequal treaties imposed by the US and other wealthy countries have ruined the farmers in Haiti and poor countries.
Rising grain prices could act as an inducement for people to start producing it again, but that is easier said than done.
Bush is starting to verbally acknowledge the need to reduce CO2 emissions, but his proposal is really just a delaying action to hold off reductions.
Resistance is growing in the UK to attempts to ban photography.
Berlusconi, il ducino, came back to power in Italy. Berlusconi is a semi-fascist and a loyal poodle for Bush.
The reason he escaped some prosecutions for corruption is that he changed laws to make the statute of limitations shorter.
Corporations employ spies to infiltrate NGOs in order to defeat their campaigns.
Earth Day, like Christmas, has been perverted into a marketing event.
Evidence that most of the population of Latin America descended from white men and indigenous or black women may not indicate that the former killed the indigenous men, but rather result from the bigotry of colonial society.
The Burmese generals are imprisoning people for campaigning for a No vote in the constitutional referendum. They have not announced to the Burmese people what the constitution says, but leaked copies indicate it would make Aung San Suu Kyi ineligible for office for having married a foreigner.
If this constitution is "approved" by this unjust referendum, it should be regarded as no more legitimate than the EU constitution which was "approved" by pretending it wasn't a constitution.
Amnesty International estimates that China will execute almost 400 people during the Olympics — most of them secretly.
An 8-year-old boy was suspended from school for sniffing a marker for a moment. When the principal was informed by a toxicologist that it is not feasible to get high by sniffing a marker, he made the school get rid of all of them just to make sure nothing miraculous would occur.
Eathan should learn a lesson from this — a lesson about tyrants and freedom. But I doubt anyone has suggested this interpretation to him. Most children do not think of seriously applying what they learn about tyranny to the way adults treat them. I was an exception.
Is Starvation Contagious? As Haiti starves, few countries pay attention, but it is spreading.
14-year-old Omar has been released from prison in Iraq. He had been imprisoned for 7 months.
The organization Anonymous is holding repeated protests against the Church of Scientology. This one focused on the Church's policy of ordering members to discontinue contact with relatives that leave the Church.
Note how the church spokesperson's response is misleading. She says that she has a relationship with family members. Maybe that is true, but did they leave the church, or did they never join? I am sure that church members are encouraged to continue to talk with their relatives who have never joined the church.
Meanwhile, secret church documents have been leaked, including some that describe how the church punishes people.
Specially chosen Chinese police have accompanied the Olympic torch in several countries, giving the public a taste of Chinese police attitudes. Host country police shared the culpability by keeping them secret.
I commend Australia (and Japan, I read elsewhere) for refusing to allow the Chinese thugs entry.
The US police and policies toward protests will soon face a similar test, when the protests against the Republican and Democratic national conventions occur. In 2004 their policies were designed to cordon off protest to places where everyone could ignore it.
The Colomb family was framed on charges of drug trafficking by police operating from bigotry.
This family had good luck; not everyone who is framed in the US manages to show it. (Some are even executed.) The family's access to the court system gave them the chance to be exonerated.
Now imagine that a similarly overzealous prosecutor accuses a foreigner of "terrorism", and that the victim cannot even go to court. Imagine that the jailhouse snitches can be tortured, not just offered early release. That shows why the Guantanamo prison and the other secret US prisons are so evil.
Zimbabwe's opposition calls for a general strike.
Drought has become more frequent in parts of Uganda, leaving many people hungry. Perhaps this is due to global warming, which is predicted to cause drought in many places.
Global warming combines with human waste runoff to destroy coral reefs. Protecting the reefs from direct human action doesn't help.
A small, localized nuclear war could damage the Earth's ozone and thus endanger people all around the world.
The head of the IPCC says rich countries have failed to lead with the necessary sacrifices for a new climate treaty.
So negotiations are on hold waiting for Bush to be unable to sabotage them.
I have an idea. Obama, Clinton and McCain could get together to appoint a shadow negotiating team, and other governments could talk with that team, snubbing official US representatives. They probably would not have trouble getting the Green Party on board too. This team would have no authority to commit the US to anything now, but other countries could have confidence that the next president would accept.
The IMF has lost its grip on middle-income countries, and as a result, is running out of money to keep poor countries down.
Six cities in the US shortened the yellow light period, creating unsafe driving conditions, in order to make more money from their automatic cameras that issue traffic fines.
Using cameras to issue traffic fines should be illegal itself.
Venezuelan President Chavez accused the US of instigating the protests against China over its actions in Tibet, and opposes those protests. I am very disappointed by that position.
The US does sometimes organize protests to destabilize other countries, but I don't think it is doing so here. If it were, why would it allow the Chinese police to come in for the torch events? I think Chavez is mistaken about this accusation.
More importantly, Chavez has taken the wrong side in a struggle much like Venezuela's. I can understand Venezuela's need to seek allies to strengthen its hand against Washington, but always supporting those allies no matter what they do is not right.
Due to a starvation treaty with the US, India pays $400 per ton of rice to a US company, while Indian farmers are going broke getting only $200
Protests are following the Olympic Torch to Buenos Aires.
It is amusing to see the tremendous concern given to the question of whether this torch is extinguished. It verges on superstition. Do they think that this would be some sort of omen?
Suppose the torch were extinguished — would that prevent the games from being held? Certainly not. Would that convince China to respect human rights of Tibetans and Chinese? Would it convince the US to respect human rights of Americans and Iraqis and Haitians and many others? I doubt it.
So what are they worried about? Why do various unjust governments seem to care so much about this? Why do they let Chinese police come along to jump on anyone that waves a Tibetan flag?
I think they are worried about the appearing less than omnipotent. Their message to anyone who disagrees with the corporate empire is, "We are in total control, and you can't change anything. So give up!"
If protestors can extinguish a torch, who knows, maybe some day they can change government policies such as torture, invasion, censorship, and imprisonment of dissidents.
US citizens: sign this petition in support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act before the public FCC hearing on April 17th.
Uri Avnery on Israel's hidden anti-peace agenda.
Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestine: Israel Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust.
Ecuador's President Correa has fired a number of army officers accusing them of working with the CIA and Colombia.
Some of them had been told about Colombia's attack on FARC negotiators in Ecuador before it occurred, and kept it secret from the Ecuadorian government. This sounds like treason to me.
A British court ruled it was illegal to drop the investigation into BAE's bribery.
B'liar ordered it halted in response to Sa'udi pressure.
The court's decision is admirable, but Clown has decided to nullify it by changing the law to legalize what was done. In effect, he wants power to connive at corruption.
Of course, he will only do this when powerful interests are involved.
Cuba is moving step by step towards a freer economy.
I hope that it won't follow China's path which led to capitalism but not to human rights.
40 million Americans are on the edge of lacking the money to buy food. 11 million sometimes miss meals out of poverty. Bush's cuts in funding for food banks makes their situation worse.
But the cause of this problem is a broad range of right-wing policies that result from the dominion of the corporations.
If a political program doesn't make the megacorporations scream, it fails to address the problem. If the corporate media don't try to deride a candidate, then he's not going to take away their power.
Indonesia ordered ISPs to block access to Youtube because one of the videos there criticizes Islam.
The censorship order has been canceled, but it illustrates the widespread tendency of Muslims (and their governments) to try to suppress criticism. Many Muslim countries explicitly deny religious freedom and freedom of expression.
It is a bad thing to access Youtube if you use Adobe's non-free, binary-only Flash player. The only way to access Youtube and maintain your freedom is with Gnash. But that doesn't justify blocking access to the site.
Ben Allbright, who helped torture prisoners for Bush in Iraq, now wrestles with his conscience, and is embarrassed by the Americans around him who consider him a hero — Americans who "don't care about right and wrong".
Allbright is torn between his ethics on one hand, and a misplaced loyalty to the US government on the other. Perhaps he could make peace with his past by taking that loyalty away from the US government, and the Americans that approve of torture, and giving it instead to the ideals that they have betrayed.
Florida sells unlimited water-pumping rights in drought-stricken State Park to Nestle for $230
This is a particularly flagrant and stupid instance of a widespread corrupt policy. Most state governments (and most national governments) openly boast of bending over backwards to attract business from other states and other nations. In the small, it could seem that the one that wins this "competition" has gained. But the overall result is that the citizens lose and the companies gain.
Not long after Bush praised the "Iraqi" government's attack against al Sadr's Mahdi Army, General Petraeus urged reconciliation between them.
I think that this vacillation reflects a fundamental dilemma for Bush: al Sadr demands the end of the occupation, so Bush wants to destroy him, but Bush can't dominate Iraq if he is actually fights al Sadr.
The European Parliament rejected a proposal to punish people accused of sharing music on the internet.
Maybe this is the end of the EU's string of attacks on sharing, but it won't eliminate the unjust directives already adopted.
The Bush forces are finding it necessary to take cover inside the Green Zone, as resistance attacks start to hit.
Universal Music Group claims that throwing away a promotional CD is illegal.
If Universal were able to establish this claim, it would be able to ruin anybody simply by mailing him so many promotional CDs that he could not afford to rent space to house them. Perhaps it could establish a musical group called "White Elephant" for the purpose.
But I'm sure Universal does not expect to establish this claim, and I doubt it even really wants to. (The question isn't actually relevant to the case anyway.) Rather, it has a more subtle plan. Universal is presenting absurdly extreme copyright demands so as to make its real extreme copyright demands seem moderate by comparison. Thus, this absurd claim can do harm even if it is sure to be rejected.
Massachusetts voters: call your state representative and state senator to support medical marijuana legislation.
You can also send the message through this site but a phone call carries more weight.
Massachusetts voters: if your state senator is on the Ways and Means Committee, call in support of reducing penalties for marijuana.
This site will tell you if your state senator is on that committee.
Clinton continues to use PR businessman Mark Penn despite his work for the sweatshop treaty with Colombia and other nasty causes.
I can understand how a business might hire a PR firm regardless of who its other clients are and what they do. When a candidate acts that way, that seems to imply that the candidate has lowered the election to mere business.
Iraq war coverage has gone down by a factor of 6 from early 2007.
I wonder why this has happened. It is sure convenient for Bush, and for McCain. Did someone arrange this?
Experts associated with the Iraq Study Group say that the Bush regime has made no progress towards its announced goals in Iraq.
I don't know what will happen in Iraq if the Bush forces are withdrawn. A new outbreak of fighting might occur. However, their presence in Iraq contributes to the tensions that might cause this fighting, so keeping them there is no solution.
Supporters of China demonstrated in San Francisco along with protestors.
I wonder who those supporters were. I suspect they were Chinese people whose reside in the San Francisco area and who see this issue through the foolish eyes of nationalism.
We see the same foolish nationalism when Americans are manipulated into supporting Bush's occupation of Iraq through their patriotism.
In Zimbabwe, after Mugabe covered up the election results and demanded a rerun, armed men are telling citizens "Vote for Mugabe or you die".
Businesses have set up a phony consumer group to lobby for further deregulation and more sweatshop treaties.
High prices for grain have caused riots around the world as poor people cannot afford to eat.
Making biofuel from food crops is part of the problem.
2/3 of Americans want the Bush forces withdrawn within a year, according to a recent poll.
US citizens: sign this petition to Rep. Murtha calling for no more funding to continue the occupation of Iraq.
The accused liquid explosive airplane bombers are on trial in the UK, and prosecutors seem to continue to claim that they could have succeeded.
It is possible that the accused were really thinking about trying to use liquid explosives, but they didn't get beyond that. If they had, they would have found that the method doesn't work.
Israel continues expansion of its "settlements" on Palestinian land, creating ever more obstacles to the possibility of peace.
Giant media companies are trying to attack the concept of fair use in copyright law, and doing so by lying about the Berne Convention.
Even if the Berne Convention doesn't conflict with fair use, it is still bad. For instance, it says that every written work is copyrighted even if it is published without a copyright notice. And it requires copyright to last for a ridiculously long time. The Berne Convention should be abolished, and likewise the sweatshop treaties ("free trade" treaties) that refer to it.
Illinois representative Monique Davis told Rob Sherman he had no right to testify to a state committee, because he is an Atheist.
Bigotry against various religions still exists in the US, but most people are ashamed to show it, because many others condemn it. However, our society has not yet learned to condemn bigotry against Atheists.
New technologies put your privacy and autonomy at risk even inside your skull.
Influential members of Congress own lots of stock in companies that profit from the occupation of Iraq.
Biofuel production has combined with climate change, eating lots of meat, oil shortage, and "free trade" to produce a scarcity of grain, causing a big price increase which is making poor people go hungry around the world.
Protests against China have begun in San Francisco.
Isn't it pathetic the way some people consider a sporting event more important than freedom? How these protests affect the "Olympic movement" is insignificant compared with the oppression that they denounce.
Israel is gradually expelling Palestinians from much of the West Bank by demolishing homes and not allowing new ones to be built.
Israeli soldiers shoot and threaten Palestinians that are obviously not armed.
But it's not just with guns and bombs that Israel kills Palestinians.
Bush wants the "Iraqi" government to sign an agreement so the Bush forces can remain there as long as he wishes (but not "permanently"). Perpetual occupation on the installment plan?
A network of state and private surveillance systems work with US systems to implement pervasive surveillance.
The Olympic torch was guarded in France much as a tyrant is guarded from the people he oppresses.
But they were unable to prevent the protests from being very effective.
The Clown's police in London told protestors that even t-shirts were forbidden as a protest.
It is no surprise that the police commander subsequently denied this. Lying is second nature for police.
The protests have convinced the president of the IOC to voice a token criticism of China, although he reserves the harshest criticism for the protestors, by exaggerating their protests into "violence".
It is interesting to note the comment in the first article that responds to the article by criticizing the occupation of Iraq. This reflects a fundamental confusion about what the point is.
If you want to support human rights, you must resist the tendency to attack foreign critics of oppression by saying "Your country is bad too." Maybe it is, and what then? Arguing about which country is worse is a distraction.
Every year the Bush regime publishes a condemnation of China's contempt for human rights. These criticisms are valid. Every year the Chinese government publishes a condemnation of the US disrespect for human rights. These criticisms are valid too. Both of these governments trample human rights, and they are both wrong. The wrongs of one do not excuse or legitimize the wrongs of the other.
The way to advance the cause of human rights is to insist on justice in each country and all countries. If pressure for human rights someday establishes in China a just government which puts the US to shame, that would be a great step forward for the whole world.
As the surveillance society extends, privileged people are given exemptions.
I think this will be a general trend, a consequence of surveillance in a society of great inequality.
Red-light cameras are a nasty system even if applied fairly, because the driver gets the ticket days (at least) after the event, when he no longer remembers the circumstances enough to argue the case. They ought to be abolished, not improved.
Barack Obama and Rev. Wright represent the two sides of Martin Luther King Jr.
Mugabe wants to hold a do-over election instead of releasing the results of the last one. And he has sent thugs to take over additional white-owned farms, a move the opposition interprets as threatening violence.
Now British officials predict that Bush will soon attack Iran.
Changes in cosmic ray indicence are not relevant to global warming.
James Hansen says global warming is worse than the projections have said, and that the EU's target for reducing CO2 levels, 550 ppm, is too high. He says that we have to keep CO2 at 350 ppm to maintain a planet recognizably like the Earth we know.
The occupation of Iraq continues to protect other countries from invasion by the US.
Aristide's pilot testifies about Aristide's kidnaping by US soldiers.
Neither Clinton nor Obama plans to end the occupation of Iraq. Now, while they are still contending with each other, is the best time to pressure them to do so.
A Chief Rabbi in Israel calls for revenge attacks against Palestinians, particularly children.
Doesn't he know that Israel has got its "revenge" in advance for years of hypothetical future Palestinian attacks? For each Israeli that Palestinians have killed, in recent years, Israel has killed more than ten Palestinians. How much more revenge does he think they need? 100 times? A thousand times? Would killing half the Palestinians satisfy him, or does it have to be all of them?
A professor is suing students for publishing their class notes.
The term "intellectual property" used by the professor's lawyers is a term of confusion and intimidation.
Poor Haitians rioted because the increasing cost of food is starving them.
The relays of the Olympic Torch face protests, and some people are refusing to participate.
US government has excluded reporters from seeing where its bombs fell on Sadr City in Baghdad, much as China excluded reporters from Tibetan protests.
The EU is investigating Microsoft's corruption of ISO.
Oil from tar in Alberta contributes very heavily to global warming.
The problem may be self-limiting, since global warming can cause drought which would make it impossible to extract the tar.
The administrators of the Popline health information search engine temporarily censored searches using the term "abortion", saying that they were obeying Federal censorship laws.
Another Bush regime employee in Iraq who was raped by colleagues tells her story.
How ironic is her continued support for Bush's conquest of Iraq. The fact that her attackers are not prosecuted is no accident. It is a consequence of the zone of no law that Bush's cronies need in order to loot Iraq. And the lack of interest by Federal prosecutors may have something to do with Bush's firing of all the ones that had integrity.
The Czech government agreed to install US anti-missile interceptors on the pretext that they are not directed towards Russia.
The fear is that these interceptors would enable the US to threaten Russia with a nuclear attack. The US has never promised not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.
Salmon populations in the US Pacific coast have crashed, and the US is considering a total ban on fishing. But even that may not bring them back.
China is treating the Olympic Games as an occasion to crush dissent.
The Bush regime brazenly declared the Fourth Amendment void to excuse "military" surveillance of Americans.
Melting of ice sheets can cause large earthquakes even if the area does not generally have earthquakes.
The US Army's PR officers are trying to convince us that imprisonment without trial in Guantanamo is ok because the prison conditions are nicer now.
Curfews in Iraqi cities are not just annoying.
Opposition candidate Tsvangirai claimed victory in Zimbabwe's presidential election. The government has inexplicably refused to publish any results.
After two Saudis called for believers in religions other than Islam to receive certain forms of respect, a prominent cleric called for their execution.
Many Muslim countries do not recognize religious freedom. Several of them have the death penalty for "blasphemy" and for Muslims who convert to any other view.
The Bush regime is considering sabotaging hostile blogs by cracking in and altering the text in embarrassing ways.
If your blog criticizes the Bush regime (or any other unscrupulous government), keep a backup copy of the text you actually wrote, and keep it on a free operating system so that it's harder to break in and alter that copy. This way, if your site gets cracked and your text gets altered, you will be able to blow the whistle.
Continuing Bush's War on the Environment, the EPA will delay its mandated action on greenhouse gases till after Bush leaves office.
Citizens of San Francisco: support the proposal to name a waste treatment facility after President Bush.
Comcast agreed to stop penalizing BitTorrent traffic.
I don't think it is unreasonable to give lower priority to large data transfers, when the net is loaded, as long as that is done fairly for all large data transfers.
Heathrow airport's terminal 5 fingerprinting scheme was canceled.
Terminal 5 has been an engineering disaster, but at least it is not a human rights disaster.
(It turns out this article was from last year. I did not see that. Sorry.)
Russian government insiders say Bush will attack Iran on April 6.
I would not take the integrity of those Russian officials for granted, and they could also be mistaken. However, I also would not be surprised if they are right.
An Arab instructor in an Israeli university, who is a pacifist, faces dismissal for refusing to declare his "respect for the uniform of the Israeli army".
European oil companies are shipping biofuel back and forth across the Atlantic to take advantage of loopholes in subsidy laws.
There is increasing recognition that biofuels do not serve conservation purposes when they are made from food crops grown using unsustainable fertilizer inputs and/or in land cleared from rain forests. This leads to pressure to correct the badly implemented programs to promote use of biofuels. To which the industry makes absurd responses such as "we can't afford a change in policy now".
Thousands of refugees from New Orleans were given federal aid money, and subsequently told that they had received too much. Now they are ordered to return tens of thousands of dollars.
Those people probably spent the money building new homes, and probably decided what sort of house to build based on how much they had received. In other words, the government led them down the garden path and now has shafted them.
A Bush regime official embezzled millions of dollars meant for "promoting democracy in Cuba" in his previous job.
Since Bush doesn't support democracy in the US, why would he try honestly to promote it anywhere else?
A defense lawyer in a Guantanamo kangaroo court claims that Bush is using these fake trials for electioneering.
Stalled Assault on Basra Exposes the Iraqi Government's Shaky Authority.
Cory Doctorow says his editor was attacked by an insecurity guard in London's Spitalfields market after he took a photo. The guard tried to confiscate his camera, but he escaped.
Ralph Nader writes to Congress calling for the Impeachment of Bush.
The US Forest Service has been corrupted by Bush's War on Integrity.
US law defines George Washington as a terrorist.
Many of the Sierra Club's members smell a bad odor in the organization's deal to endorse some Clorox products, especially since the organization's charter says it is not allowed to endorse any products.
Some theaters in Japan have canceled showings of a movie about the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including war criminals, after threats.
Al Sadr has called for a cease fire with the "Iraqi government" forces.
The Bush regime decided to disown responsibility for the attacks on the Mahdi Army, after they ran into trouble.
The torture of prisoners in Guantanamo has driven some guards to seek psychiatric help out of guilt.
The UK continues its policy of imprisonment without trial, but judges are starting to trim it back.
Mugabe has lost the election in Zimbabwe, despite all his efforts to cheat.
But Mugabe may not allow the results to be recognized. The electoral commission has not announced any results.
Philip Morris has cunning plans to defeat present and future tobacco control measures that encourage smokers to quit.
The Chaos Computer Club published the fingerprint of a government minister as a demonstration that biometric security is not so trustworthy afterall.
If I am attacked by armed thugs, I'd rather have them steal my ATM card than cut off my finger.
White Americans are angry at Rev. Jeremiah Wright because he reminds them of truths they would rather forget.
McCain cites Osama bin Laden to justify the continued occupation of Iraq.
Since 2001 there has been a persistent pattern in the "bin Laden" tapes: they say just the thing to help Bush and his associates domestically. It suggests that whoever makes these tapes — whether it is Osama bin Laden or someone else — is in cahoots with Bush.
That fits in with the theory that Bush either set up the 9/11 attacks or arranged to prevent them from being stopped.
Pressure increases for a boycott of the Olympic Games.
New York City issued a broad subpoena to the developer of TXTmob for all the private information about the text messages sent with the system. The developer argues that he should not have to give this information.
He should have made sure to discard all this information as soon as the system did not need it any more.
Note the arrogant attitude of the New York police towards citizens: after violating thousands of citizens' rights, they call their actions a success. What did they succeed in doing? Keeping protests down to a level that could be mostly ignored, as if they did not happen.
Censorship in the Clown regime:
Business owners that wish to show a movie about police violence face threats of imprisonment.
Canadian organizations find it is illegal to use Google Docs because they have a legal requirement to protect personal data.
The fact that Google Docs makes you vulnerable to the U SAP AT RIOT act is an indicator of a fundamental problem: to use Google Docs means giving up control of your computing, and your data. It's a mistake for anyone to do this. Whether or not you are legally required to maintain control of your data, you deserve that control.
One Iraqi police unit switched sides when ordered to attack the Mahdi Army.
Several Chinese intellectuals have published a petition to the Chinese government calling on it to respect the human rights of Tibetans and others.
When the government of China carries out censorship — of anything — it violates the rights of everyone in China, of whatever ethnic group.
I am sure the US government's warning about surveillance in China is justified, but visitors to the US must be equally concerned about government surveillance, given the U SAP AT RIOT act, the illegal spying by telephone companies, the spy taps in telephone companies, the tracking of the location of cellular phones (why do you think they are required to have GPS capability?), RFIDs, and so on.
Uri Avnery on Israel and the rights of its Arab citizens.
FEMA distributed trailers to the refugees from Hurricane Katrina even though it already knew that they emit toxic levels of formaldehyde.
Wal-mart failed in a bid to use trademark law to suppress parody merchandise.
The Mahdi Army says that those attacking it are the Badr Brigades militia of SCIRI, not the Iraqi police and army.
Since the Iraqi police and army are full of men of the Badr Brigades, this could be a distinction without a difference. In any case, what is clear is that the Bush forces are using airplanes to support SCIRI against the Mahdi Army. Meanwhile, the demand for "militias to give up their arms" is just a way of putting a nice face on a demand for the Mahdi Army to give up and let SCIRI slaughter it.
Increased fighting in Baghdad has led to a curfew. The occupation's "Green Zone" enclave was hit by rocket and mortar fire.
As China brought journalists back to Lhasa to show them a pretty face on things, some monks showed up to say the Chinese story was a lie.
Tim Stevens, who uses marijuana to treat nausea caused by HIV, used the necessity defense to win acquittal for the charge of possession of marijuana. In Texas, yet!
The prisoners of Bush's Iraqi puppet government in Fallujah are kept in unhygienic conditions and don't get enough food.
One of the leaders of the Bush-arranged overthrow of Haiti's President Aristide is now being sought for drug smuggling.
I wonder what caused his falling out with his former masters.
Bush tried to intimidate and punish allies that would not support his plans to conquer Iraq.
For another country to have "bad relations" with the US can be painful, like going to the dentist. But in the long term it is necessary to avoid a much worse problem: subjection.
As the SCIRI militia in Iraqi uniforms fights with the Mahdi army, Bush is elated.
The biggest lie in Bush's statement is the pretense that Iraq is a "sovereign nation". The sovereignty of the Iraqi government is just a pretense.
Another Antarctic ice shelf has collapsed. Scientists predicted this might happen within 30 years, 15 years ago. Things are getting worse faster.
Since ice shelves float on the ocean, the loss of one does not affect sea level. But the loss of the ice shelf enables ice on land to move faster into the ocean, and it also increases absorption of sunlight (since ice is a better reflector than water), which speeds further warming.
Some evidence suggests that US government agents may have organized the 9/11 attacks.
Mugabe is holding another blatantly rigged election.
McCain talks about curbing lobbyists but lets them raise funds for him.
Many Americans are in thrall to "pay day loans" which can charge up to 800% interest.
Honoring Katharine Gun, the translator who sacrificed her career and risked prosecution to expose B'liar's spying on the UN, in an attempt to stop an unjust war.
Ms Gun is an example of the best in humanity.
Public presure on supermarkets is forcing the British fishing fleet to move towards sustainable practices.
This partial step forward shames the UK government, which would have mandated sustainable practices years ago if it had the right values and priorities.
Nanotechnology in foods could do amazing things, but nobody knows whether the nanomaterials are safe to eat.
The major drug companies give doctors lots of gifts to get them to prescribe their products. Massachusetts is considering a law to ban this practice.
The head of the Federal Trade Commission has quit to become an executive of Procter & Gamble, after serving that company by protecting it from FTC regulations. "The real corrupting influences are the things that are legal."
As propaganda for war with Iran, the Republicans take facts about Iraq and graft them onto Iran.
Speaker Pelosi made a strong statement condemning China in support of Tibetan protestors.
Her condemnation of the Chinese occupation of Tibet is entirely correct. What a shame that she fails to condemn in similar terms the equally devastating and equally unjust occupation of Iraq by the Bush regime.
The "Iraqi" police have attacked al Sadr's Mahdi army in Basra.
Al Sadr has responded with peaceful protests by his supporters, condemning the US and its puppet government in Iraq.
Here's some background information.
The "Iraqi security forces" are largely under the control of SCIRI and the Badr brigades. Thus, in effect this is a battle between the Badr brigades and the Mahdi army.
Al Sadr has shown a high level of integrity and patriotism throughout the Bush occupation of his country. I doubt that he respects the rights of women or non-Muslims, but neither do the other sides. Iraqis would do well to support al Sadr.
The American Physical Society refused to publish a paper after the authors refused to hand over the copyright. But the physicists have launched a campaign to make the APS change its policy. Bravo!
Pakistan wanted to censor Youtube, so it sabotaged the Youtube site (for users all around the world) by generating a false DNS entry.
The TSA plans to do random checking of luggage on Amtrak trains, to make Americans feel even more insecure.
As anyone who has watched The Longest Day is aware, bombing a train does not require riding the train. So this is totally absurd as a "security" measure. But they will probably claim, after years in which there continue to be no bombs on trains in the US, that this is all due to them.
I never take Amtrak trains, because they demand ID to buy a ticket. Anywhere I can go by train in the US, I can also go by bus without showing ID, and that is what I do.
Protests against the Chinese occupation of Tibet have spread around the world. Meanwhile, China has admitted that it has arrested nonviolent protestors.
McCain has a pastor problem too.
This reminds me that I have seen the text of one of Jeremiah Wright's "scandalous" statements. He suggested that US support for Israel's cruel occupation of Palestine may have been part of the cause of the 9/11 attacks. It seems entirely plausible to me, and not "anti-semitic" at all. He also accused Israel of being racist, and that seems a good description of the occupation policies, which are often compared with apartheid in South Africa.
Sanal Edamaruku of Rationalists International dared a self-proclaimed black magician to kill him on live TV. The magician said he could do it, but failed, with hundreds of millions of Indians watching.
Hooray for rationalism, and hooray for Mr. Edamaruku.
Everyone: sign the petition for global standards on biofuels, to reject the kinds that drive up food prices or chop down rainforests.
Where the major candidates stand on sweatshop treaties.
All the "free trade" treaties weaken democracy by transferring power from states to global business. None of the candidates acknowledges this issue.
NAFTA and other recent US free trade treaties directly attack democracy, by allowing companies to sue in special international courts against any laws that they claim reduce their profits. Obama does raise this issue; the others do not recognize it.
I think Nader is against all the sweatshop treaties, but I do not have confirmation of this.
China imprisoned Yan Chunlin for saying that human rights are more important than the Olympic games
Chinese people should not make the mistake of taking sides with the Chinese government against Tibetans. The means used by the Chinese government for maintaining its control of Tibet, which include censorship, restriction of journalists, and imprisonment of dissenters, trample the freedom of Chinese people just as they trample the freedom of Tibetans.
Sick Palestinians continue dying because Israel blocks them from leaving Gaza for medical care.
Genetic research shows that the Spanish conquerors of Latin America killed most of the native men, then mated with the native women.
The teachers union in the UK voted to oppose military recruitment that presents a distorted picture of what being in the UK military means.
The quote at the end from the "ex-soldier, Terry" is misleading. A 6-week experience of military training may or may not show what military training is like. It certainly does not give a taste of what it is like to shoot civilians, or to fight with guerrilla forces that don't want you occupying their country.
Uri Avnery endorsed Barack Obama for president of the US. He is sure that McCain and Clinton are nothing good for peace between Israel and Palestine, but he thinks Obama might, even though he doesn't say so.
I do not share his doubts because I do not expect politicians to do better than they say.
Israeli troops have beseiged the Arab-American University in Jenin. They have forced journalists to leave, much as China has done in Tibet.
Perhaps Israel is taking advantage of the immunity from criticism that results from the fulsome support that foreign leaders offer to Israel.
Pakistan's new prime minister will try to free the judges that were imprisoned by President Musharraf.
Over 4,000 Bush forces soldiers have now been killed in combat in Iraq.
A much larger number have been gravely wounded, and an even larger number suffer from PTSD. But all that is nothing compared to the million-plus Iraqi death toll from the invasion.
The article has a few inaccuracies. Iraq Body Count does not try to estimate the number of Iraqi dead. Rather, it counts those deaths that can be firmly established, producing a lower bound.
Also, neither Clinton nor Obama plans to fully withdraw the Bush forces from Iraq.
Soot from burning coal, diesel and wood is a large part of human-caused global warming.
Protesters for Tibet intruded on the lighting of the Olympic Torch. China and Greece failed to stop them completely at the ceremony, but Chinese television suppressed all mention of what occurred.
Isn't it sad to see the "idealistic" Olympic officials who believe (or at least say) that sport should be kept pure of distractions such as human rights? They reminds me of the "open source" supporters that think technology should be kept pure of distractions such as human rights.
President Chavez is destabilizing the right-wing government of Peru by offering free health care to poor Peruvians.
Peruvian President Garcia's masters in Washington have far more money than Venezuela does. They could win the competition for Peruvians' hearts and minds instantly, if they were willing to try. But they are too greedy to provide free health care even to Americans, and all they want to do to poor Peruvians is exploit them. Chavez' charity embarrasses Garcia by exposing him for what he is.
There is one error in the article: as far as I know, Chavez has never supported the FARC, except in false accusations by the Colombian government.
People are arrested and imprisoned in the US just for following a hyperlink to a site that is said to contain "child" pornography.
Even if we put aside the issue of censorship, enforcing it this way is an outrage.
The same is true of the US corporate media: it is not very hard to find out the things they don't say, but most Americans don't bother, and the result is that Bush repeatedly gets away with lies.
In Iraq, jailed women tell of abuse.
US citizens: call your senators to support the Foreclosure Prevention Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Peace activists in the UK were stopped and questioned under "terrorism" laws after a camera automatically recognized their car's license plate. They had been put on a list for reasons that had nothing to do with terrorism.
The fact that this is considered legal shows that "anti-terrorism" law is a lie. The real threat to citizens of the UK is not the occasional terrorist. It is their own government.
The UK police have bullied theaters to cancel showings of an independent movie. The movie might offend the public, since it shows explicit violence — real footage of the police.
Bush is continuing the occupation of Iraq with the same scare tactics and lies that he used to start it.
5 years ago, Cheney and McCain said that the Bush forces would be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq.
Here's the report about Saddam and Al Qa'ida that the Pentagon wanted to discourage people from seeing.
In Iran's phony democracy, many opposition candidates have been barred from running, so that reformers have no chance.
The BBC's Digital Restrictions Management has been cracked. And the article has a qu
