The pharmaceutical industry demands increased patent power saying this is necessary so it can pay for research for new drugs that will save lives. But that is not really how it uses the money.
The new chairman of the 9/11 commission, replacing Kissinger, has business ties with Osama bin Laden's brother in law.
Ibrahim Issa tells the full story of his arrest by Israeli forces and almost immediate commencement of demolition of his house.
Bush will go as far as war to oust Hussein because he would lose face if Hussein remains in power.
Protect endangered cats by buying bottles with real corks.
The US is using torture to get information from Al Qa'ida suspects. Less extreme forms of torture are being carried out by US government employees directly. More extreme forms are done by proxies in other countries.
I can understand the feeling that torturing terrorists is justified. But what about accused terrorists that aren't real terrorists? What about when someone else decides that torturing you is justified?
A site that hosts many activist organizations is being disconnected by its ISP as a result of pressure from Dow Chemical. One of the organizations posted a hoax Dow press release and a parody of some of its web pages. Dow's first response was to claim this was an accusation of copyright infringement--probably not justified, because the Supreme Court ruled that parody is protected. Dow must then have put some sort of pressure on the ISP to disconnect the whole site.
To publish on the web requires an ISP. If sites are disconnected for trying to criticize powerful corporations, freedom of the press becomes just a fiction.
Homeland security alert: Osanta bin Claus.
Simply participating in a protest is good for your health, independent of the benefits of changing a bad social system.
The Hope Flowers School is looking for donations of funds so it can keep teaching peace to Palestinians.
The Chinese workers who make most of the toys we buy are paid 30 cents an hour--and being poisoned by the substances they use at work.
Sending astronauts to Mars would be cheaper than a war with Iraq, and would contribute far more to advance humanity.
Even if we narrow our consideration to the danger of weapons of mass distruction, space habitats are the only way to make humanity lastingly safer from them. Stamping on Iraq while North Korea flaunts its nuclear weapons and sells ballistic missiles won't even help.
Whoever said "It's impossible to be angry while looking at a penguin" had never met me. I sometimes feel that I can't escape from penguins inappropriately used as symbols of the GNU operating system by well-meaning people who believe the system is "Linux".
But I don't blame real penguins for this, and I'm disturbed to read that they are dying in thousands.
One thing this article does not make clear is whether all the penguins that live in the Falkland Islands are dying, or only some of them. Does anyone know?
The US requires visitors from certain Middle-Eastern countries to register in a special way. I don't think that policy is oppressive in and of itself, but inflexible the way it is being carried out reflects the spirit of Bush and Ashcroft.
Reports of prison guards denying prisoners needed medical care are legion, in the US as well as other countries. This can't be put down to simple mistakes or ill-trained staff. It appears to embody a pervasive attitude of cruelty--the same cruelty expressed by the guard who said, "So many Iranians! I'll go get my shotgun."
This web site presents the campaign against imposition of Chinese censorship in Hong Kong.
Ibrahim Issa works in the Hope Flowers school that promotes peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Recently Israeli forces arrested him, accusing him of being a terrorist. Rather than put him on trial for this (which would require mean checking evidence), they began demolishing his house just a few hours later.
It turned out that there was no evidence, because it was just a case of guilt by association. He had rented a room to the wrong person. The demolition was stopped--the house was only partly destroyed--by an international outcry.
But most Palestinians are not famous and cannot expect so much personal attention. When they are victims of guilt by association and collective punishment, there is nobody to help them.
The US is arresting hundreds or thousands of middle-eastern visitors for minor visa violations, tearing them away from family members and then mistreating them.
Bush and his henchmen have set their bureaucratic machine on systematic dumb useless cruelty.
Several European governments are trying to protect their fishing industries in the short run, even though this could mean wiping them out completely in a few years.
Fishermen live in child's fantasy world: they refuse to recognize that their overfishing has consequences--for them and for everyone. Whenever limits on fishing are imposed to prevent extinction of the fish stocks, the fishermen say, "This must be unnecessary, because it hurts us too much." Wishful thinking, that. If we let them continue, soon they will all be out of work; rational thought says they should accept some pain to day to avoid worse pain tomorrow. But that takes courage, which today's fishermen apparently lack. So they pressure governments to move slowly in protecting the fish stocks. Repeatedly this caution leads to failure.
We must not leave this important decision to childish minds that refuse to recognize where their own actions are leading.
If, as the US accuses, the Iraqi declaration about weapons programs has gaps, the UN resolution is not violated--yet. The weapons inspectors are supposed to fill in the alleged gaps. Iraq may or may not cooperate with them.
Here is a thoughtful analysis of various possibilities for what is happening, which explains how an attack on Iraq could easily hurt the US if Iraq has not had a chance to comply.
According to Human Rights Watch, the new ruler of Herat is just a little better than the Taliban. Women can go to school now, but they are not allowed to drive, talk to the press, or take off their Burqas. If they do, they are savaged. Nonetheless, the US government is quite chummy with the ruler.
Senator Lott resigned as the leader of Senate Republicans after the criticism he received for praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. Thurmond's platform was racial segregation.
Lott is not resigning from his seat in the Senate, so the change in leadership won't really have much effect on the Senate's ability to do harm. The only way this might do some real good is by reminding people what lurks in the heart of many conservatives.
Activists have given Poindexter a taste of his own privacy-intruding medicine.
They asked for your help:
When and if you see Mr. Poindexter purchase something, travel somewhere or do, well, anything -- send us a tip describing your observations. We will display the information received right here on this Web site.
As of Dec 17, the Israeli army had cut off the village of Asira A-Shamalia completely. Soldiers arrested 60 women walking to Nablus where they work as teachers and nurses, and held them at gun point for 24 hours (as of when the report was made), while the rain fell on them.
The major elements of Dubya's "response" to the September 11 attacks really have nothing to do with September 11. They echo the proposals of the Project for a New American Century, to which several of Bush's appointees belonged. September 11 was nothing more than an excuse for what they wanted to do anyway.
Tellingly, Condoleezza Rice is quoted as describing September 11 as an "opportunity" and asking how to "capitalize" on it.
The Pentagon is once again planning a massive propaganda campaign to convince people around the world to support US policies. It might also tell lies and smear and frame opposition figures--it wouldn't be the first time.
The UK is sending troops to the Persian Gulf now, which suggests that Dubya is going to launch a war regardless of what the UN weapons inspectors find.
Dubya is already saying that the Iraqi report contains lies. Maybe it does, but if past experience is any guide, Dubya will not show us any substantial evidence to that effect.
Dubya is planning to spend millions on missile defense.
There's nothing wrong with defense against ballistic missiles in principle--if the system works and is affordable. However, in the light of Newsweek's report that the Soviet Union installed a nuke in its embassy in Washington, it seems ineffective. Even if you imagine it as a defense against hypothetical future North Korean missiles, it would have to be installed in every city to prevent them from being able to do any damage. And that would be so expensive it's ridiculous.
The main effect of Dubya's missile defense program will be to subsidize his cronies in the companies that build the system, and to provide more excuses to cut spending on programs that help most Americans' lives.
Tunisia censors the press and practices torture of political dissidents.
Now an Internet site www.kalimatunisie.com outside Tunisia publishes uncensored Tunisian news (in French).
Bringing education to Tuareg children in Mali.
Yasser Arafat condemned Osama bin Laden for trying to exploit the Palestinian cause as a justification for atrocities.
Since Arafat's Fatah movement has been linked with suicide bombers, I can't take this totally seriously; however, it is a step in the right direction.
A party linked with murderous anti-muslim riots last March has won the election in Gujarat, India, by appealing to religious hatred.
The Surveillance Camera Players have many "resource" pages describing various surveillance systems and how they do or don't actually work.
Union organizers in Turkey have been sentenced to over a year in prison for holding an "illegal demonstration".
They were protesting against a law that prohibits unions from striking.
There have been large protests in Hong Kong against a Chinese plan to impose a law of treason that could be easily stretched to cover opposition to government policies.
The Hong Kong government responded that the protests show Hong Kong has freedom of speech today. That is true, but fails to refute the claim that the proposed laws will reduce that freedom.
Ice in Greenland is melting faster than ever observed before. This contributes directly to sea level rise.
If the sea level rises the amount scientists generally expect, a few feet, it threatens to make millions of poor people homeless in coming decades. But this is not the worst it can get. At the end of the last ice age, sea level rose 150 feet fairly quickly. If the Antarctic and Greenland ice all melts, something like this could happen again. Most of the world's great cities would be drowned.
Professor Ben-Artzi, who handed out leaflets for peace to the audience at a public panel discussion in Israel and then said he wanted a chance to respond to the speakers, was physically attacked by the guards, then accused of trespassing.
A visitor from Britain is threatened with imprisonment in the US, and prevented from returning home, on the excuse that he cut across private property to participate in a protest.
I am not particularly an advocate of animal rights, but even so I find it dangerous when the government seizes on flimsy excuses to attack peaceful protestors.
If things go well, a war against Iraq could be cheap. If not, it could cause economic disaster for the US.
The article notes how the movement of manufacturing out of the US has left US exports dependent on stopping individuals and companies from copying: for instance, on proprietary software, movies, and patented drugs. But it considers this merely as a fact, and does not judge the system from an ethical point of view. Many of the changes that the article warns might follow from increased antiamericanism are changes that should occur anyway. There's no need to have an opinion about the US to believe that people should switch from Windows to GNU/Linux or that South Africa and India should be free to make medicine cheaply so their citizens can afford it.
A study in Africa shows that simply treating syphilis and other curable sexually transmitted diseases cut the rate of AIDS infection by 40%.
North Korea is openly planning to produce nuclear material. It makes no sense for the US to launch a war against Iraq for suspicions of having an underground program to develop weapons of mass distruction while ignoring Korea's far more effective program.
Meanwhile, Colin Powell made a statement recognizing that US support for dictators in the Arab world is part of the cause for hostility towards the US.
European fishermen protested plans to cut fishing quotas by blocking the English Channel with their boats. They want to be allowed to keep fishing, but that is impossible--the fish they catch are being driven to extinction by overfishing already.
China has sentenced two Tibetan monks to death after a secret trial.
Remember when we were told that including China in world trade would lead to democracy and human rights in China? Instead increased world trade has had the opposite effect: it endangers democracy and human rights everywhere else. That's why I support the campaign to boycott goods made in China.
The independent reports on riots in East Timor against the government, but doesn't go into much detail about why.
A local group's report attributes the problem to a mob that was angered by harsh police activity, and then used by opposition politicians while police failed to respond effectively. But it suggests that the underlying causes include unemployment and lack of progress towards democracy and prosperity.
An ETAN announcement made shortly before the protests refers to widespread dissatisfaction with the regime that the multinational institutions have imposed.
The British Library has suspended librarians for using the Internet to look at porn. It's not merely an injustice, it is also stupid.
A peace activist in Iceland was arrested for warning that Iceland's planes might be targets for terrorism if Iceland participates in a war against Iraq. The police chose to interpret this as a threat rather than as a warning.
I would not use this arguments like this against Bush's crusade against Saddam: the danger of retaliation is not a good reason to stand aside from a war if there really is a good enough reason to fight it in the first place. Nonetheless, the readiness to arrest people for making such arguments is dangerous to democracy. Much more dangerous than Saddam Hussein.
Social workers and police are working together in Canada to harass dissidents.
A hoax press release pretending to be from Dow Chemical explains why it simply cannot help the people of Bhopal, much as it would like to do so.
A recent note describes the arrest of local residents for trying to clean up the polluted site themselves.
Economist Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, argues that monopolies on broadband access in the US threaten to cause high prices, and perhaps censorship as well.
The high prices will tend to discourage the growth of broadband access. Meanwhile, Hollywood is claiming that the government should encourage broadband usage by giving it increased power to restrict our computers. Perhaps the government could achieve the job more effectively (and with less cost to our freedom) by breaking up broadband monopolies instead.
An American nurse is in prison in Indonesia for "visa violations" after treating injured people in refugee camps in Aceh as a volunteer. (The idea that a tourist visa prohibits this is rather peculiar.) She has been tortured and is on hunger strike to protest repeated delays in her trial.
Israeli soldiers have repeatedly attacked UN operations and personnel in Palestine.
A new constitution is being drawn up for Europe.
This raises the question: how democratic will this constitution be? Most especially on the question of how to regulate business, and how to negotiate trade treaties.
If Europe is to be democratic, the most important
The US government is publishing insults about UN weapons inspectors that were appointed at the request of the US. Robert Fisk suggests this is part of a propaganda campaign to pave the way for war.
I'm struck by the resemblance between this propaganda campaign and the ones that dictatorships (including that of Saddam Hussein) use.
Several teenagers confessed to raping the "Central Park jogger" in 1989. Now DNA evidence shows that someone else committed the crime.
False confessions are not unusual. Sometimes they result from police pressure that people don't know how to resist. It may not be what we normally call torture, but if it can lead people to confess to something they didn't do, it has the effect of torture.
The International Association Against Psychiatric Assault, which opposes forcing people to undergo psychiatric treatment, practices democracy in a new form: the members vote directly on the Internet.
I agree at least partly with their goals; I would have to study their position more to know whether I agree fully.
Israeli soldiers dynamited a home in Gaza while the deaf grandfather was still in it. They did not bother to check. He was killed.
Israeli soldiers often force a Palestinian family out of their home and dynamite it, so that everything they own is destroyed and they have nowhere to live. They do this because a relative is accused of fighting Israel. Even when nobody is killed, this is collective punishment, which is prohibited by the treaties Israel has signed.
The MPP filed charges against "Drug Czar" John Walters for publishing lies to influence the marijuana legalization vote in Nevada.
Reacting to the disastrous oil spill that has ruined beaches and destroyed fishing near Gallicia, France and Spain have agreed on a policy to keep dangerous tankers away from their shores.
How amazing it is when governments act so intelligently.
Putting Kissinger in charge of the investigation into what really happened on Sep 11 is a blatant way of turning the investigation into a coverup.
A sarcastic column in the Independent, whose topic is the British government's response to the firefighters' strike, gets to the heart of the callous attitude of the Blair government.
The British government issued a report, supposedly relaying information from spies in Iraq, saying that Saddam Hussein is ordering large numbers of people to hide documents and weapons components that the UN inspectors will be looking for.
I suspect this information is false, both because it is exactly what Prime Minister Blair wants people to believe, and because the claim that Saddam believes he needs chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to stay in power seems incredible. Saddam surely knows, just as we do, that many repressive regimes stay in power using ordinary guns and bullets. He also knows that a large number of people can't keep a secret. With large numbers of Iraqis involved in hiding these things, it's predictable that the inspectors would find out, giving Dubya exactly the excuse he seeks for the war he wants.
Saddam is not stupid. It is more plausible that someone behind this report is lying than that Saddam is playing so foolishly into Dubya's hands.
A state official in Nigeria, citing Islam, has called for a Nigerian writer to be murdered.
Islamic law is a form of brutality that the world should not tolerate. Nigeria should abolish Islamic law in the states that have pretended to adopt it, and officials who make death threats should be imprisoned.
The prohibition of prostitution is criticized in a thoughtful article from the Independent.
I can't imagine being the client of a prostitute, because the situation would make me feel unwanted. It seems I need mutual tenderness and desire to be part of sex, and the request for money is a sure sign that someone doesn't really want me for myself.
However, for those whose feelings about this are different from mine, prostitution ought to be legal.
Since neither Union Carbide nor its successor, Dow Chemical, has cleaned up the poisoned site of the factory in Bhopal, local people tried to do it--but they were attacked savagely by the local police.
It is interesting that a police inspector told these people falsely that they are Hindu fundamentalists. He might have fooled someone else, but how could he have fooled them? They know what their group stands for. The strange thing is that police often do this. They believe that the concept of truth does not apply to them.
This article explains how the "Homeland Security" bill opens your internet communications to government snooping.
Note that the article refers to "hackers" but uses the word wrongly--the writer really means "crackers", which are people who break computer security. By the way, I don't object to prison sentences for people who break security and endanger people's lives, if it is the truth that they did so and not an exaggeration. What is dangerous to democracy is prison sentences for people who break security for political graffiti or civil disobdience.
Another article explains how far "total information awareness" intends to carry surveillance of everyone in the US that the government wants to watch--the occasional real terrorist, and political dissidents labeled as terrorists.
The choice of Poindexter for this program is ironic. His past experience with America-hating terrorists was to supply them with arms and lie about it.
The Supreme Court is looking at a case about whether police in the US can bully (or in effect torture) people into making statements.
Just a few months ago, the EU abolished the law that required telephone companies and ISPs to destroy customer data once it was not needed for billing. Now they plan to require this data to be kept for a long time. The excuse is terrorism, but there is no rational reason to believe these surveillance measures are really necessary--or that they will only be used against terrorists.
Israeli soldiers shot a British UN worker in Jenin, causing a diplomatic row between Israel and the UK.
What the intifada may be doing to Israel's rule of law
Residents of Hebron have to hide on Holy Days.
Argentina has defaulted on its debt to the World Bank. There may be reprisals, but in the long run it could be helpful.
Many poor countries are trapped in a cycle of increasing debt that is never repaid, only transferred to more debt. In order to keep transferring the debt, they must agree to cruel policies--for instance, making children pay to go to school, which excludes the poor from education. Even if the country can keep transferring the debt and never needs to pay anything, these policies hurt the people. The only escape from the trap is to break the cycle.
If default discourages lenders from continuing the cycle, that is beneficial.
The government of Vancouver, rather than doing anything to help the homeless poor find housing, has obtained an injunction to kick them out of the abandoned building that they were trying to repair.
Dubya attacks the Clean Air Act, weakening requirements for various polluting industries to clean up their pollution.
Perhaps Bush feels uncomfortable in a clean world.
A proposed UK law to abolish many of the rights of those accused of crimes is even worse than was expected.
During the recent protests against the NATO meeting in Prague, the protest headquarters was evicted. (I presume they had paid good money to rent it.) It is clear that this was nothing but a dirty trick to sabotage the protests.
Iraq plans to give the UN arms inspectors such a large amount of information that studying it may take a long time.
This can be seen as a tactic to delay the inspectors' report. It can also be seen as the only rational response to the US threat that withholding anything the US considers relevant would be taken as grounds for war. Should Iraq take the risk of omitting anything?
The bulk of information may delay the final report, and thus impede the job Dubya wants the inspectors to do--get out of the way so he can invade. But it should not impede the job the inspectors have been officially sent to do: finding and destroying any weapons of mass destruction and facilities for making them. They can study the records in whatever order they like, so having more complete records on hand can only help their check for weapons.
A commentator in the Independent (London) reports that cocaine and even heroin are becoming popular in her generation, and she attributes it to the previous practice of using ecstasy.
If the connection is real, I wonder if it results from the fact that the government treats them the same way. A person might think, "The government told me nonsense about ecstasy and was wrong, so why should I believe what they say about cocaine?"
The Onion reports: Muslim Groups In U.S. May Be Developing Nuclear Families.
"Since last Sunday, a question has been running around in my head and troubling my sleep: What induced the young Palestinian, who broke into Kibbutz Metzer, to aim his weapon at a mother and her two little children and kill them?"
The ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana in Nevada and Alaska failed, but got around 40% of the vote, which shows that legalization has substantial support.
Part of the reason for the failure was lies told by Dubya's "drug czar" John Walters about changes in potency of marijuana since the 1970s.
Dubya demonstrates his shallowness and narrowness of mind with his own words.
There are continuing protests against Venezuelan President Chavez; the police in the capital, Caracas, are siding with the protesters, who on previous occasions were described as the wealthier segments of society, typically the people of European ancestry. His supporters are also holding demonstrations, which the police attack.
Whether Chavez is a tyrant or whether his opponents are trying to maintain unjust privilege is hard for me to tell at this distance. The one Chavez policy I can judge for myself is a policy of firm support for both using and developing free software--a clear rejection of corporate domination of one area of life. This suggests that Chavez is at least to some extent trying to do the right thing, and shows he is not merely an opportunist.
An aged oil tanker broke in two and sank near the coast of Spain. Most of the oil went down with the ship, but people expect it to leak out and destroy the shellfish beds of a whole region in Spain.
The tremendous ecological and economic danger from transport of oil underlines the folly of the US policy of keeping gasoline cheap, which encourages rapid consumption of oil and the transport of large amounts of oil.
Turkey has imprisoned Mehmet Bal for objecting on grounds of conscience to military service, and there are fears he will be injured in prison.
Homeless people in Vancouver are squatting in an abandoned building to make the public aware of the dangerous shortage of housing there. The government responded by arresting people and destroying their meager belongings.
Note that "liberal" in Canada is the name of a right-wing party, not like the US.
A general who says he would remove most Israeli settlements and talk peace with Arafat is expected to become the head of Israel's labor party.
If he gets a chance to do this, he will remove the main Israeli obstacle to peace, putting the ball in the Palestinians' court.
As noted here before, most of the Israelis living in the West Bank territories do not want to be there, and would leave immediately if they could only get an apartment in Israel proper. The US could help the cause of peace by buying the settlers' apartments from them and then either knocking them down or handing them to Palestinians.
In Baghdad, as the UN weapons inspectors go to work, US jets are already bombing even though the "war" has not begun. Iraqis expect the US to invade regardless of whether Saddam cooperates with them.
The US war on drugs is causing a lot of harm in Bolivia.
Police in the UK want to be able to lock people up for 36 hours without charging them with a crime. Their behavior towards protestors in the past suggests they are likely to use this as an excuse to lock protestors away even when no crime has occurred.
The New Zealand government is trying to adopt sweeping new surveillance powers. The New Zealand Green Party is leading the opposition to these bills.
Iran's religious rulers, pressured by student protests, are reconsidering the death sentence of Hashem Aghajari, who was convicted of blasphemy for suggesting that the mullahs' interpretation of Islam is not the only possible one.
Since the US army has no trouble meeting its recruiting targets, what is the reason for the proposal to require American men to have military training?
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is asking for support for the participants in a protest march, who were charged with serious crimes after mounted police charged through the crowd attacking people.
Tony Blair is trying again to attack the rights of the accused in the UK. His latest plans would deny many defendants the right to trial by jury and allow multiple trials for the same offense.
A few years ago Blair wanted to limit jury trials to the rich and famous, on the excuse that other people have less to lose if they are unjustly convicted and imprisoned. Contempt for the public in general cannot be more blatant.
Governments in Europe and the US already fabricate charges against political protestors. To give them increased power over ordinary citizens is a step backward. Where governments need increased power is over large corporations like Microsoft that believe, from experience, that they can buy the support of governments.
The evident US and British intention to attack Iraq whether Saddam Hussein disarms or not, all while encouraging the persecution of Muslims in many parts of the world, is feeding Al Qa'ida.
The Pope criticized Berlusconi, the TV magnate who became Italian prime minister by controlling nearly all the private TV in Italy. This may be useful somehow. The Pope also urged civilization to commit suicide by having large families. Well, nobody can be right all the time. Italians will probably ignore the former; let's hope they ignore the latter too.
The famine in Ethiopia is partly caused by drought, and partly by a callous Ethiopian government--but also partly by the world economic system that has allowed coffee prices to fall to the point where the farmers who make your coffee are starving.
Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States.
Just as Hamas was meeting to to discuss rejection of suicide bombings, Israeli forces launched a fresh attack which probably destroyed the chances for agreement.
Israeli peace groups point to a pattern of such actions, outbursts of Israeli violence whenever Palestinians are discussing a reduction in their violence. They say Sharon deliberately sabotages any Palestinian initiatives to move towards less violent resistance, so he can continue using their violence as an excuse for brutal policies and theft of land.
Bush is currently sending more troops to the Middle East.
This suggests he has no real intention of allowing arms inspectors to disarm Iraq peacefully.
William Safire, a famous conservative who usually disagrees with me, wrote something every American should take note of:
If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend--all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
Some parts of northern Nigeria have imposed Islamic law. The Miss World contest in Nigeria was almost canceled by a boycott by the contestants, until the Nigerian government promised that a sentence of death by stoning, imposed on a woman for adultery under Islamic law, would not be carried out.
Yesterday I saw a machine that was reportedly used until 1923 for cutting off the hands of thieves in Yogyakarta, Java. This brutality is practiced today in Saudi Arabia and perhaps Iran and Pakistan.
A Microsoft software license includes terms that prohibit use of the software to criticize Microsoft. The terms are buried in a long license, so you might easily not notice them, criticize Microsoft, and get sued.
Microsoft denies the terms mean what they appear to mean, but that is little basis for relief. This illustrates the fact that shrink-wrap licenses are very dangerous--they give businesses too much power.
Human Rights Watch says that the Attorney General of Colombia is blocking prosecution of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Columbian military.
Research reports that marijuana can cause some serious health problems. Part of the reason is that marijuana today is very potent.
It still seems that the problems will be less than those of tobacco. A large fraction of tobacco users use 40 to 60 cigarettes per day; the addictiveness of tobacco tends to lead to heavier use. Only a few marijuana users use as much as 3 joints per day. Most use it less than once a day, often much less.
If marijuana were legal, it could be sold in various potencies. Perhaps most marijuana users would choose less potent reefers.
I avoided commenting on the DC sniper while the national media were filled with it. Now the lawyers for one suspect are accusing the police of breaking the law and trying to prejudice possible jurors.
When police bully someone into confessing, sometimes the confession is false. We all understand that a person under torture might confess to things he did not do. It may be hard to believe that people can do this even without torture, but it is true, and false confessions are a well-known phenomenon. It seems some people cannot stand up to psychological pressure.
I don't know whether Malvi is guilty, but police practices that go too far will squeeze out false confessions from time to time, even if this confession was true. That can do more harm than the sniper murders did.
Prejudicing the jurors is also dangerous, and unlike the danger of false confessions, having a strong will does not make you safe. I'd rather be shot than falsely convicted of murder.
Ever the enemy of democracy, Bush now plans to make it easier for the government to alter and destroy records that are supposed to be available for the public to study.
How the war on terrorism promotes terrorism--and other issues.
The crime of "driving while Black" exists in the UK as well as the US. British people of Asian (mostly Indian) origin are less likely to commit crimes than whites, but the police suspect them more often.
Republicans in the senate plan further tax cuts for rich people, installing conservative judges, more destruction of wilderness, and fewer restrictions on corrupt accountants like those who audited Enron.
Berlusconi, il ducino of Italy, tried to cancel the European Social Forum in Florence on the excuse that there would be violence. This is absurd, since the European Social Forum is not a protest against any particular event in Florence. The only people who might have started violence were the police.
Islamic parties did well in Pakistan's elections; General Musharraf is trying to block them from taking power.
Pakistan's laws are cruel and theocratic already--people are regularly sentenced to death for blasphemy, and if they hope to be exonerated on appeal, they are often murdered in prison. Anyone who wants to make Pakistan more Islamic must be little different from the Taliban. However, the US strategy of blocking democracy in these countries has the long-run effect of boosting Islamists, because they become the alternative to nondemocratic rulers that serve the US.
The US government is forcing schools to turn over students' names and addresses to military recruiters who then try to contact the students at home.
Under the US Constitution, the Federal government is not supposed to control education. They get around this by putting strings on Federal aid that all schools depend on. We have to recognize that the difference between an explicit legal mandate and a condition attached to aid many people need is just an excuse.
Massachusetts voters adopted a referendum prohibiting bilingual education in public schools. Non-English-speaking children will be given one year to adjust to English, after which they will be required to learn all subjects in English alone. The referendum did not tell voters that this law would mean teachers could be sued for speaking to a child in his or her native language.
The probable result is that many immigrant students, all but the brightest, will fall steadily behind after that one year, because they won't understand English well enough to learn the subject matter. Many of them will feel it is pointless to go to school, and drop out. For lack of any better alternative, some will join gangs and increase the crime rate.
This is bad for all students, not just immigrants, because bilingual education is good for everyone. A Washington DC public school, Escuela Bilingüe Oyster, has a long waiting list for people outside the district who want their children to go there. Most of them are English-speaking speakers who want their kids to grow up knowing Spanish also.
EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has warned colleges not to monitor what files students are transmitting on the Internet.
South Africa has arrested the alleged perpetrators of a rather cracked terrorist plot to expel the majority blacks from the country.
But while people can smile in amusement at the absurdity of this plan, many South African blacks faces real danger from their own government, from its support for business-dominated economic policies and its disregard for AIDS prevention (see previous notes). Ironically, part of what the plotters supposedly planned to do was cut off power supplies. That's just what the government is doing with its privatization policy.
The UK has sentenced former MI5 David Shayler to prison for revealing dirty government secrets to the public.
Unions believe that Bush intends to use an invasion of Iraq as an occasion to employ the Taft-Hartley act to destroy them.
The demand for rare mahogany for making expensive furniture is endangering the species and also the Amazon rain forest as a whole.
An Israeli legislator has proposed to make it a crime to be a witness for the International War Crimes Tribunal, or assist it in any way. Simply keeping a record of war crimes and publishing it would be prosecuted.
Tens of thousands protested at the Quito summit negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
PBS rejected its own documentary on the misconduct of the Florida election in 2000. Some of these forms of misconduct were used again by Jeb Bush to get reelected as governor.
This article shows examples of several broad patterns of media bias under corporate influence.
Israeli and International protestors who were shielding Palestinians' olive trees with their bodies were attacked and injured by Israeli construction workers.
It is interesting to compare these volunteer human shields with the human shields used by the Israeli army, who were forced at gunpoint.
A documentary unprecedented details the various forms of cheating that Dubya used to steal the election in Florida.
Europe has adopted a ban on animal testing of cosmetics. A scandal has developed because a company planned to move production overseas in order to continue doing animal testing.
I'm not particularly against animal testing of products, though I think it may as well be avoided when there is no special reason for it. The important point in these events is that Europe was going to ban the sale of cosmetics that had been tested on animals, but didn't do so because of WTO rules.
This is one more instance of how the WTO subordinates business to democracy. I am not against world trade, but the WTO as it exists today must be abolished.
A rare case of good news: the Tamil Tigers, which have been fighting for independence for a part of Sri Lanka, say they want to make peace.
In late October PBS was screening a documentary reporting on how Katherine Harris removed some 50,000 voters from the Florida voting lists and thus put the 2000 election in doubt. The dates for most cities are Oct 30-Nov 5. For the schedule, see www.GregPalast.com/events2.cfm#news253.
A related suit brought against Florida by civil rights groups was settled out of court in September, and the election laws passed since the 2000 election remain inadequate
Dubya's brother Jeb Bush is running for reelection as governor of Florida. Just as last year, Florida is excluding tens of thousands of legitimate voters claiming that they are "felons". But that is not enough for Jeb Bush to defeat his Democratic challenger, Bill McBride.
Florida Democratic chairman Bob Poe says someone phoned him, claiming to be speaking for the McBride campaign, and told him to cast an absentee ballot on Nov 10--five days too late. He suspects that someone is systematically telephoning Democrats with this deceptive advice.
The Republicans deny involvement in this, but I don't think their word counts. Democratic politicians are not above lying either; however, if indeed there was a massive campaign to trick democrats, we should soon have plenty of witnesses who can testify they were called.
I don't know anything about Bill McBride except that he is running against Jeb Bush, so I cannot say I endorse him. However, Jeb Bush helped for Dubya to steal the election, and getting rid of Jeb will make it harder for Dubya to do that again.
Yannis Serifis has been accused in Greece of participating in the "November 17" terrorist group, but supporters say he is being framed for his political opposition--and that this isn't the first time he was framed by the government.
State workers in Colombia have gone on strike against president Uribe's austerity program.
Earlier this year I wrote in favor of building a fence to separate the occupied West Bank from Israel, as a way of preventing terror attacks without subjecting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to constant oppression.
Since then, Israel has begun building a wall; but rather than building it between the Palestinians and Israel, Israel is putting the wall between Palestinians and their farmland--in effect, stealing their land. The construction workers have threatened to kill Palestinians who protest peacefully.
A joint protest by Israelis and Palestinians was held on Oct 26.
Israelis in the peace movement are staying in Khirbet Yanun, the Palestinian village whose inhabitants were driven out by Israeli settlers, so as to enable the villagers to return home.
Bush continues to use devious twists and turns to prevent a congressional investigation into the events of 9/11.
The Israeli government has begun denying foreigners entry to Israel if they have nonviolently protected Palestinians by acting as witnesses or shields.
ISPs are moving towards new price policies that discourage people from using a lot of bandwidth.
I don't entirely share the attitude of the author of that article; I don't think that charging more for heavy use is necessarily outrageous. But it is interesting to note that these policies discourage use of services such as Internet radio (as well as P2P networks).
The pressure to impose new restrictions on computers and recording and copying devices often cites a desire to "encourage more use of broadband". It is interesting to contrast that with this FCC decision that will tend to discourage use of broadband.
A British court is investigating the former head of the Israeli army for violations of the Geneva convention, including the incursion into Jenin, where Israeli forces destroyed large numbers of houses and used civilians as human shields. The initial accusation that the army also massacred hundreds of civilians in Jenin seems to be false, but the army's tactics kill civilians regularly.
Meanwhile, a Human Rights Watch report calls for prosecution of the leadership of Hamas for ordering suicide bombings.
Russian police used a paralytic gas to disable Chechens who were holding hundreds of hostages in a theater. The gas killed over a hundred of the hostages, and Russia has been criticized for failing to tell doctors how to prevent the deaths.
Most of the perpetrators were killed also--but not, it seems, by the gas. This article in the Independent says they were shot while unconscious.
This should be the larger scandal. Perhaps it is true that the police didn't expect the gas to kill anyone, but the police who shot the Chechens cannot make that excuse. There is no possible excuse for killing suspects who are defeated and unresisting, no matter what crime they are accused of.
International monitors will observe the Florida elections this year.
That such monitors are necessary is a humiliation that the US owes to George Bush and his supporters.
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack... Rome [as it expanded its empire] was always [claiming to be] attacked by evil-minded neighbours."
Does that sound like the US under bush?
Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who controls all the main Italian television stations, is pushing a bill designed to help his friend avoid being convicted of bribery.
Indonesia is adopting anti-terror measures that raise fears they will be used to suppress opposition to the government.
The authoritarian regimes in Singapore and Malaysia can detain terrorist suspects indefinitely--just like the authoritarian regime in the US.
Israeli expansionist settlers are trying to drive Palestinians off their lands by shooting them as they try to harvest their olive trees. Sometimes they steal the olives. Sometimes they also burn the trees.
Israelis who support peace are helping to shield Palestinians so they can harvest their olives.
California has established high standards of fuel efficiency for cars. Bush is having the Federal government sue California to overturn them.
Bush makes his money from the oil business. It seems that he is determined to maximize his short term oil profits no matter what the cost to society.
Why did the head of the New York Stock Exchange meet with a representative of a guerilla army in Colombia?
Starvation is hitting parts of India--the government has food but is failing to distribute food to people who are hungry.
The ACLU is suing the Denver police for keeping records on political dissidents and treating them as potential suspects.
94 protestors were arrested at an anti-McDonalds rally in Mexico City on the excuse that a parasol and a window were damaged.
How policy on Iraq, in the US and other countries, is driven by profit.
French Interior Minister Sarkozy has proposed a ban on street prostitution, claiming that streetwalkers somehow hurt the people in the neighborhood where they operate.
Making prostitutes livelihood illegal is only going to make their lives worse. If Sarkozy wants to "clean up the streets" without hurting the most unfortunate, he should offer them another place to ply their trade--or a way they can live without having to be prostitutes. However, his right-wing party would never dream of doing that.
What chain of decisions led Israeli troops to kill 8 or more Palestinians in Rafah?
Relatives of people killed in the Sep 11 terrorist attacks criticized the White House for trying to block or hamstring Congressional investigation of why the attacks were not stopped.
This article also gives details about the points where Bush and Congress disagree.
The right-wing government of Colombia, which enjoys strong US support, is attacking protesting trade unionists.
A book about Osama bin Laden has been published by a journalist who knew him.
The world has a picture of Mother Teresa as someone kind who helped the downtrodden, but actually she was a fanatical Catholic, interested in performing religious services for sick people, not in their health.
The donations her organization gets do not seem to be reaching the poor in Calcutta.
A previous note explained that the miracle cited by the Vatican as grounds for declaring Mother Teresa a saint is a cure that was actually caused by a straightforward medical operation. One misrepresentation is piled on another.
In Vancouver, Canada, both police and drug dealers are threatening non-violent squatters in an unused building.
Israeli settlers have had a victory--their persistent violent harrassment has chased all the Palestinians out of a village. Ethnic cleansing, which some Israeli government people advocate, has taken a step forward.
Police repression of anarchists in Long Beach, California, continues. Two anarchists have been charged with felonies for having a gas can in their car.
Although the price of a gallon of gas in the US is less than 2 dollars, the International Center for Technology Assessment estimates that a gallon of gas really imposes some $5 to $15 of cost on society.
The US Forest Service is suppressing reports about the health of forests, and a conservation group is suing to demand release of the reports.
A comparison of the Iraq situation with the Cuban missile crisis.
A petition organized in Israel for educators, psychologists, and social workers calls for allowing schools in Palestine to reopen. Non-Israelis appear to be invited to sign. The petition page also explains how bad the situation is, so even if you are not an educator, psychologist or social worker, you should still take a look.
After the attack on the World Trade Center, people were urged to keep on visiting New York, for the sake of its tourist economy. After the recent bombing in Bali, the West had the opposite reaction: "Stay away!"
I have endorsed Green party candidate Jill Stein for governor of Massachusetts in 2002.
While the US prepares to go to war against Iraq for developing nuclear weapons, it hesitates even to cut aid to North Korea.
I won't say that trying to make friends with North Korea is absurd. We have much to offer that that country needs. This might have as much chance of keeping the world safe from their possible nuclear weapons as war would. But if so, why not consider such an approach to Iraq?
Intimidation campaigns are being aimed at Western reporters and professors that criticize Israel's treatment of Palestinians, but in the Israeli press there is still criticism of government figures whose plans call for ethnic cleansing and atrocities.
A Spanish judge accused the Basque separatist organization ETA of trying to carry out "ethnic cleansing" by forcing non-nationalist Basques out of the region.
I won't defend ETA, which is clearly a terrorist organization, and I do not sympathize with the goal of separating the Basque region from Spain. However, this accusation is both an evident exaggeration and an evident absurdity. Even if ETA were trying to force all non-nationalist Basques out of the Basque region--a charge that the moderate Basques, the supposed victims of this campaign, reject--that would not be ethnic cleansing, because they are all the same ethnic group.
(I'm told that ETA has run a campaign of violence against Basques who speak out in opposition to its views, and that some of them have fled.)
Terrorist organizations are dangerous, but lying governments are more dangerous.
Iraq may be developing nuclear weapons; North Korea is certainly developing nuclear weapons and is much closer. Under the circumstances, the contrast between US policy towards Iraq and North Korea is amazing.
The NRDC is asking the US government to declare beluga sturgeon (from which beluga caviar is obtained) an endangered species, saying they are in danger of extinction.
Bush is trying to shut down or replace government scientific advisory boards with people that will give the advice he wants.
This resembles what Bush did earlier this year to international bodies. The Bush administration is practicing a systematic campaign to replace science with pro-business lies.
A letter by Abraham Lincoln opposing a plan to let the President decide whether to attack Mexico applies perfectly to the present day situation with Iraq.
The World Bank funds incinerators around the world that are intended to prevent polution but actually make it worse.
The US government paid to write and print textbooks for Afghanistan that promoted Islamic extremism. The Taliban's schools used them. Combining evidence from a number of US statements, it appears that the US is still using the same extremist texts in the books it is donating to Afghan schools.
It is possible that something is being done to correct part of the problem. According to the Washington Post article, Ahmad Fahim Hakim was actually talking about the old textbooks, not the new ones, and some changes are being made:
"UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old "militarized" books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials."
If the new textbooks are being changed only to remove the parts that encourage fundamentalist violence, they may still teach a extreme religious outlook on life. Should US funds be spent to teach that? Dubya surely thinks so.
(Can anyone who reads Arabic obtain a copy of the new school books that the US is giving to Afghanistan, and report what they say?)
A proposal for the UN to engineer a regime change in the US is clearly a parody of Dubya's arguments for regime change in Iraq, except that in this case the facts are true and the arguments are valid.
A detailed description of what global warming is likely to do to the Bush family ranch in Texas gives an idea of how foolish is his policy of doing nothing to curb global warming.
City and Federal officials, including Mayor Giuliani(*), told people it was safe to go back to work in downtown Manhattan while the fires in the World Trade Center were spewing toxic chemicals into the air. Data and studies showing the danger and reporting on medical problems were covered up or not publicized.
* I wonder, since Giuliani was a night-mayor, who was mayor of New York in the daytime?
The US Green Party calls for an independent truth commission to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11, and also calls for repeal of the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. I think that is a good reason to vote Green. (There are other reasons as well.)
I already voted (by absentee ballot) for the Green Party candidates for governor of Massachusetts, state treasurer, and state representative.
Paramilitary murder gangs are carrying out killings in Mexico, while the police do nothing.
The leader of a Ukrainian anti-nuclear group was murdered as Ukraine plans to build more nuclear power plants and ignore a report saying it would be unsafe.
But the issue is not just nuclear power. The funding for these plans would impose a terrible debt burden and the deal requires privatization of electric power in Ukraine. Privatization of utilities in poor countries has often resulted in price increases of 100% or more, which can mean that many people get disconnected.
General Anthony Zinni, who was recently Dubya's own Middle East envoy, opposes unilateral intervention in Iraq, saying it would only help Al Qa'ida.
Speaking of hawks in the administration, Zinni said, "I'm not sure which planet they live on," Zinni said, "because it isn't the one that I travel."
One of those arrested in Washington while not protesting, along with 600 other non-protestors, believes that this illegal police action had a strategic purpose: to make people afraid to participate in further nonviolent protests. According to his report, it succeeded.
He thinks that the reduced agenda of the IMF meeting constitutes a victory, but I am not convinced. The freedom to protest and the readiness to use it are more important in the long run than any IMF meeting, more important than the IMF at all. Unless people respond with outrage and a new readiness to oppose the US government, this will be a victory for Bush, and a defeat for democracy and freedom.
An article in the Independent, of London, argues that the Bali bomb proves the need for a war on terror, not a war on Iraq.
A supposed "miracle healing" attributed to Mother Teresa, and proposed as the basis for a proclamation of sainthood was actually a medical cure.
This error fits in with the reputation of Mother Teresa during her lifetime. According to articles in Free Inquiry, people think that her organization provided medical care for the sick, but all it really did was perform religious services as they died.
Bush continues to repeat that Iraq has ties to terrorism, and that it poses a threat of war to the US, but never offers any proof for either one. He doesn't think that should be necessary.
DOD documents prove that the US knew that the Iraq sanctions would deny safe water to the civilian population and thus spread disease.
Exiled humanist author Taslima Nasrin has been sentenced to a year in prison in Bangladesh for supposedly criticizing Islam. Her book, about persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, has been banned. She was tried in absentia, a procedure that is considered fundamentally unjust.
Pakistan, which Bangladesh was part of until the 1970s, is even worse, sentencing people to death for "blasphemy" for even mild criticism of Islam. And don't forget the Iranian death sentence against Salman Rushdie.
All this illustrates the lack of respect for basic human freedoms, including religious freedom and freedom of the press, that Islam often leads to. I don't think that Bangladesh has adopted strict Islamic law, but even without that, it has fallen into Islamist injustice.
Christian theocrats in the US, allies of Dubya, have not yet proposed to imprison unbelievers, but persist in trying to use government funds in propagating their religion.
I met Taslima Nasrin at a humanist conference in Mexico a few years ago. The conference had a tour to visit the ancient city of Teotihuacan; there, amidst ancient temples, I showed her a Bulgarian folk dance, and she started to show me some Bengali dancing--but it turned out to be Kathak, a classical performing art form that could be compared to ballet, rather than folk dance. Not the sort of thing one can pick up even slightly in five minutes. I hope she is doing well in exile.
Travelers are likely to overreact to the danger of terrorism in Bali just as they overreacted to the danger of terrorism in New York a year ago.
The European Union is promoting a treaty for "protection of broadcasting organizations" that would give broadcasters the "right" to authorize or prohibit "fixations of broadcasts". Unfortunately, they are not talking about prohibiting people from being obsessed with TV. What they mean is prohibiting you and me from making recordings of broadcasts. And they are not content with merely saying "don't do it"--they envision that radios and recorders will be designed to stop you.
Today you can get a radio and a tape recorder and record whatever you like. Today you can get a TV and a VCR and record whatever you like. The aim of this treaty is to make such equipment unavailable.
A peaceful protest in Ottawa, at a speech by US ambassador, called attention to the fact that the US plans to deport an Ethiopian national back to Ethiopia for probable torture and death, even though Canada has offered to accept him.
Always A Fighter, Always A Terrorist, an article in Haaretz, explains the biased language used to describe Israeli and Palestinian acts of violence.
The American Gulf War Veterans Association demands the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of Defense, for lying to the public. He said that the US had never provided biological warfare organisms to Iraq. A senate report in 1994 showed that the US did provide them.
It's not just that Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense, has a responsibility to know about these things. He personally played a central role in US relations with Iraq in the 1980s.
Bush says he has agreed to an independent investigation of the Sep 11, but is trying to block it from getting started.
This sounds like what we were concerned Saddam Hussein might try to do with the UN investigation that he faces. I wonder, is Bush taking inspiration from Hussein, or projecting his own attitudes onto Hussein?
What Bush wants us to forget.
The League of Nations was destroyed because the great powers did not respect it. The US risks destroying the UN in the same way.
A CIA report says that Saddam Hussein is unlikely to attack the US, or support terrorists' doing so, unless the US attacks Iraq.
Marwah Barghouti, formerly found in demonstrations for peace and for a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, is now on trial, accused of being a terrorist.
When Uri Avneri attempted to go to the court to watch the trial, he found that the press and the public were excluded from the courtroom. The government had selected people to attend, from a right-wing extremist group.
One person who could not get in protested outside the courtroom with a sign that simply listed the number of Israeli and Palestinian deaths.
Israel is not the only middle-eastern country that interferes with people who stand for peace. The Egyptian government recently abolished the Cairo Association for Peace.
A court in the US imposed multibillion-dollar punitive damages on the tobacco company Philip Morris. The reason was that the company lied (along with the other tobacco companies) to the public about the harmful effects of tobacco.
Currently the US prohibits marijuana while allowing tobacco, a far more dangerous drug, to be sold. Despite the danger of tobacco, it should not be illegal, because we should not tell people how to spend (in two senses of the word) their lives. Rather, we should make active efforts to discourage kids from starting to smoke. At the same time, we should legalize marijuana, and end the system of prohibition that has ruined millions of lives in the US, and many others elsewhere.
MacDonalds workers, angry at the ways MacDonalds has blocked them from unionizing and thus keeps their wages at poverty level, are planning a world-wide day of resistance, 16 Oct 2002.
White House: President's "War Boner" Must Be Satisfied
Police began intimidating protestors in Worthing, England before their protest even got started.
The real purpose of Sharon's policy is to create foreigners.
The UN resolution proposed by the US and UK includes two trick requirements that demand Iraq (1) allow US spies to enter under the guise or weapons inspectors, and (2) allow US armed forces to travel everywhere in Iraq. In effect it demands total surrender while pretending not to. This makes it effectively just a provocation for war.
Arrests of protestors who have done nothing illegal are not limited to Washington DC. 28 people who went to Baltimore to protest against a rally by neo-nazis were arrested just as they arrived. The police then attacked various progressive organizations in the city.
It is scary and strange that police in the US have so much sympathy for right-wing extremists. Don't they remember Oklahoma City? But this is not limited to the US--police in Genoa, Italy, forced arrested protestors to salute pictures of Mussolini. Perhaps police come to admire anyone who uses force against people.
Doug Malkan, a victim of the Sep 27 mass arrest, describes his experiences.
He calls this arrest "pre-emptive", and it is interesting to note that it came shortly after Bush announced plans for "pre-emptive" attacks against countries if they might perhaps someday threaten the US. The same policy apparently applies to dissent: Bush would like to arrest people if they might perhaps someday threaten his policies. His version of the golden rule is, "Do one to others before they do one to you." Alas for the US, that policy is a policy of committing aggression.
Malkan says that some of the ways he and his fellow prisoners were treated violate the Geneva Convention. There was concern in January about whether the US would abide by the Geneva Convention in its treatment of people captured in Afghanistan. I'm sure many Americans read about that issue and thought, "Why should I care whether we respect the rights of those people? They are our enemies, so they have no rights!" The Geneva Convention is concerned with treatment of captured soldiers and civilians in war time. Every side in a war is someone's enemy, so everyone on every side needs the protection protection from barbarism that the Geneva Convention provides.
Citizens protesting cruel government policies need it too.
A lawsuit seeks to block Navy use of a new kind of sonar system that can kill whales and dolphins by damaging their hearing.
The Navy argues that normal peacetime use will only kill a few sea mammals. Wartime use would kill far more. In a justified war, a situation where there killing human beings is legitimate, I would not object to killing some whales too. But how many whales might that be? Sounds propagate a long distance in water. Could this risk the extinction of some whale species?
It is not unusual for sonar to injure whales.
On September 27, police in Washington DC arrested 600 people who were standing or drumming in a park--not particularly protesting--without even giving them a chance to leave. The police attacked and injured some of the victims, then arrested everyone there; they held the arrested parkgoers in handcuffs for 20 hours (others report longer periods), illegally deprived them of food, and did not allow them to contact lawyers.
When you hear police speak of "enforcing the law", think of the policemen who laughed when reminded of the laws governing how arrested people are treated. If anyone says police are heroes, remember their reaction when reminded that democracy includes dissent. And if you ever on a jury listening to a policeman's testimony, remember the lies.
In World War II and Vietnam, US war correspondents used to travel with the troops, but after Vietnam US governments have severely limited press coverage of war. The habitually secretive Bush administration will surely try to restrict the press more than before in Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein won't allow a free press either, neither we nor Congress will be able to tell what's really going on. We will be reduced to wondering what part of Dubya's speeches are true and what part are lies.
If Congress adopts a resolution allowing war with Iraq, that would be an opportunity to solve the problem. Congress could add the condition that US war correspondents must have the same access that war correspondents had in World War II.
The House resolution to authorize an attack on Iraq requires Bush to certify that the US can fight Al-Qa'ida and Iraq at the same time.
The idea that it is useful to require the president, or a department of the administration, to certify something as true as a condition of some activity presupposes that the president or the department has a reputation for honesty and must maintain it. We had plenty of reason to start doubting this in previous administrations, which on various occasions issued dubious certifications in order to be able to do whatever it was that required the certification. But when applied to Bush, who is willing to contradict himself from one day to the next, it reduces to asking him to pronounce a nonsensical magic formula.
In the future, such certification requirements should be designed to impose a penalty for a certification that is false or exaggerates the facts, to replace the penalty of loss of reputation for truth that was implicitly assumed to apply.
The congressional investigation into intelligence failures has found that the CIA had plenty of warnings, including awareness of the possibility that airplanes might be used as weapons. This would seem to imply that Bush was lying when he said nobody in the administration had thought of the idea.
Today Bush said that war with Iraq "may become "unavoidable. By doing this, he is trying to mislead us, pretending he reluctant to have a war when in fact he seeks one. One day he wants to disarm Iraq; the next day, it's "regime change" and never mind if Iraq is disarmed. He must think we have rather short memories.
What the US needs is regime change.
Two opposition MPs in Zimbabwe were arrested for making a video of governing party agents buying votes.
Stepan Mesic, who was president of Yugoslavia when Slobodan Milosevic took power there and is now president if Croatia, testified about Milosevic's plans to attack Croats and divide up Bosnia.
Megacorporate mergers and business-dominated globalization are tantamount to the USSR by the back door.
UN negotiator Hans Blix says there is progress in discussions with Iraq to arrange return of UN weapons inspectors.
A BBC report around 0300 GMT on Oct 2 said that Iraq has completely agreed to inspections, and that Colin Powell says that the US will "not accept" the return of weapons inspectors under past UN resolutions.
Just days ago, Bush was calling for invasion of Iraq on grounds of "violating UN resolutions", and warning the UN it would be "irrelevant" if it fails to enforce them. Now that Iraq has agreed to comply with the resolutions and the UN is apparently having success in enforcing them, the Bush administration position seems to have turned around 180 degrees. Now, according to the BBC report, the US may try to "thwart" UN inspections of Iraq.
Apparently whatever justification Bush offers for an attack on Iraq is not sincere, just verbal manipulation.
(If you can find a URL for a textual form of this BBC report, please email it to me so I can link to it. I will not link to audio files in RealAudio format or any other format that cannot be played using free software exclusively.)
Houston police went on a rampage in August. Sent to look for drag racers but not finding any, they arrested almost 300 customers at a mall instead.
The storm of outrage was so large that the officer in charge of the raid was suspended from his post. The false charges of trespassing, laid against those who were arrested, were dropped by the mayor some 2 weeks after the arrests. (Why did he take so long to act?) However, many of the victims pled guilty immediately so that they could resume their lives. It is not clear whether the charges against them have been cancelled or whether the fees for towing their cars will be refunded to them. Some of them are suing the city.
Political activists in the US are being put on a list of "terrorists" which regularly stops them from boarding airplanes. When lawyers and journalists ask various agencies who is responsible for this, they get a run-around.
An Israeli general argues that there is no reason for the US to attack Iraq, because it is not a real threat.
In 2001, 6,238 people died while waiting for organ transplants in the US because no suitable organs became available. In the same year, 3000 people died in the US because of terrorist attacks.
To prevent more deaths from terrorist attacks, governments hastily passed laws that damage the civil liberties and privacy of living people. There is no evidence that these laws were actually necessary to achieve the goal, but Congress was in too much hurry to think about it.
Meanwhile, deaths due to shortage of organs continue--the number for 2002 will probably be around the same as that for 2001. Why are so few organs available? Because of foolish laws. If you die, even if you have signed an organ donor card (I have, have you?), the medical system will let your superstitious and foolish family members kill several people by refusing to allow your organs to be transplanted into them.
It would be easy to solve this problem, or a large part of it. Just pass a law saying that any dead person's organs can be used for transplantation unless that person explicitly took some action to say no. But while we take away the rights of living people on account of 3000 deaths, we shrink at slightly changing the rights of corpses to save 6000 lives a year. Is that rational?
In the longer term, it may be possible to save some of these people (and maybe many others too) using embryonic stem cells. The US government is trying to prevent that, too.
The Green Party and Libertarian Party candidates for governor of Massachusetts have sued to be included in the debates that have been limited to the Republican and Democratic Party candidates. The debate is, I believe, organized by various media companies; the lawsuit alleges that these companies are giving valuable contributions to the included candidates, which is a violation of state law.
In the UK, a sex toy seller who is also a political candidate criticizes the laws that restrict access to porn, and the prudish attitude of condemnation that it receives from much of society.
Meanwhile, in Australia, extramarital sex is commonplace among the officials of their signals intelligence agency, and unnamed consterned idiots are concerned that these officials might be "compromised by a foreign government" because of their affairs. Yet the fact that these affairs are so widely known and that so little effort is made to hide them suggests that there is nothing to fear. Blackmailing these officials would be like blackmailing a rock star about groupies. "G'day, which of my affairs are you threatening to expose this time?"
Fire-retardant chemicals used in various produts have been found in high concentrations in arctic wildlife, and appear to be killing bear cubs and seabirds. They may be endanging the people who live there, too.
The Bush administration disregarded environmentalist warnings and diverted too much water to agriculture, and killed a large fraction of the salmon in the Klamath River.
Anita Roddick dared to write about how dissent in America is being equated with support for Al Qa'ida--and promptly received hate mail accusing her of supporting Al Qa'ida. It's an excellent example of how a gang of people who are determined to erase an idea try to intimidate others who continue to mention forbidden truths.
I got a taste of this treatment last September, when I asked Americans to write to their "elected representatives and unelected president" in support of civil liberties. It was not a large taste, probably because I was reaching a smaller audience. The place where I've received the treatment with full force is from the people who use my work, but are determined to believe that it was developed by Linus Torvalds.
The public radio station in Boston is having a pledge drive, and this led me to reflect on why I stopped donating. I used to donate regularly, because I appreciated the station, even though the usual NPR commentator on Clinton seemed to have an axe to grind and frequently criticized him for insignificant things (not really bad policies such as NAFTA and GATT). I appreciated a radio station with no commercials.
Then I noticed that I was hearing commercials on the station: the announcers and interviewers were reciting the slogans of various companies. They deny that these are commercials, they call them "enhanced underwriting"; but they sound like commercials, feel like commercials, and smell like commercials, so I say they are commercials.
Some of these commercials are for companies that are doing harmful things. ADM used to pay for positive publicity to offset its conviction for price-fixing. Nowadays, the company that makes Flash advertises itself as "changing what the web can be". They certainly are changing it--for the worse, inviting people to make web pages that can only be viewed with their software.
I told the station why I stopped donating. If you too think business should have less influence on public radio, please tell your station that you will start donating when they stop having commercials.
Supposing it is true that Iraq is on the verge of developing weapons of mass destruction, does it mean that the many half-million deaths caused by UN sanctions were completely pointless?
The UK government has released a list evidence for the claim that Saddam Hussein presents an immediate threat, following a big publicity buildup that said it would really prove the case. However, skeptical legislators said contains little new information.
Bush, too, has shown this pattern: repeatedly saying "When you see this, you'll be convinced," but when we see it, it turns out to be the same old insufficient evidence warmed over. Is he hoping to fatigue our skepticism? It all adds up to reasons to distrust both the Bush regime and the Blair regime.
The US is trying to convince its rather unhappy allies to create a NATO rapid reaction army for use against "rogue states". Would those include the US?
A representative of the Colombian Commission of Jurists speaks about the deteriorating human rights situation in Colombia and its connection to US involvement.
Declassified US documents prove the US was following General Pinochet's atrocities in Chile in great detail as they were being carried out, starting just after the coup. The US supported Pinochet strongly for the whole period, and therefore bears part of the responsibility to those who were murdered or tortured by the Chilean authorities.
Representative Ron Paul poses a number of questions that people ought to think about before supporting a war with Iraq.
A couple of the questions embody assumptions I disagree with. I don't think it is wrong in principle to overthrow a tyrannical regime in another country, for instance. What is often bad about US intervention (both military and commercial) is that it often supports tyrants or opposes the democratic power of the people. And if the US supported Iraq's invasion of Iran, and if we now consider that invasion wrong, the proper conclusion now is not that we should excuse Saddam Hussein but rather that we should blame the US also.
However, overall these are important questions to think about.
Some communities in Columbia are experimenting with new systems of direct democracy.
Nigeria canceled one death sentence for an unmarried mother, only to sentence another unmarried mother in the same way.
A witness describes how protestors prevented Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel, from giving a speech in Canada.
Netanyahu's policies were designed to create obstacles to peace with the Palestinians, and I would support a protest to express opposition to what he stands for. However, actually stopping him from giving a speech is wrong.
An article in the Sep 2002 issue of Church and State (published by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) reports that the US is working in the UN with Islamic theocracies to support theocratic positions in international law.
This not only means opposing abortion rights and birth control, as you'd expect; it also includes supporting execution of minors. This peculiar juxtaposition faithfully reflects the insane views of some right-wing Christians, who think it is not so bad to kill people after they are born.
The theocratic governments that the Bush regime joins with include Sudan, which has been carrying out a civil war with Christians and Animists in the south in the attempt to impose uncivilized Islamic law on them. This although Sudan is classified by the US government as a "state sponsor of terrorism". When Dubya says he won't condone terrorism, I guess he makes an exception for countries that will further the religious extremists' agenda. But this is inconsistent: since Sudan's terrorism is motivated by similar religious extremism, shouldn't Bush support that too?
The US appropriated $34 million for the UNFPA (UN Fund for Population Activities) in 2002, but then Bush decided unilaterally to refuse to spend it. The UN estimates this will result in 2 million pregnancies, 77000 more deaths of children, and 1 million more abortions. The religious right-wingers don't mind this, though, as long as people are forced to live in the world they want.
The Irish government is asking its voters for a second time to agree to the Nice Treaty. They rejected it in the first referendum.
The Nice Treaty is extremely dangerous because it permits a majority of EU governments to approve an agreement with the World Trade Organization. The agreement would then be binding on all of the EU, bypassing the European Parliament. The EU is already insufficiently democratic, but this would make it more so.
If Ireland again rejects the Nice treaty, it could save all of Europe.
Global warming is forcing Alaskan Inuit to move their town.
Meanwhile, the US government is still offering flood insurance to people who build on coastal land that is being eroded. This insurance needs to be canceled so that people will be encouraged to move to safer locations--as well as to avoid catastrophic financial blows to the government.
According to NPR on Friday evening, flood insurance is even being offered to new construction in areas near New Orleans that would be flooded for certain if a strong hurricane hits the area. Global warming is probably making hurricanes more numerous and stronger, and causing sea level to rise, both of which increase the danger.
From SF Chronicle, Friday 9/20/02, page A18:
"Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, said that in closed sessions this week, administration officials had been asked several times whether they had evidence of an imminent threat from Hussein against US citizens.
"They said 'no'," she said. "Not 'no, but', or 'maybe', but 'no'. I was stunned. Not shocked. Not surprised. Stunned."
If there were a way to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq without great bloodshed (as easily as the Taliban were removed in Afghanistan, say), and if we could be pretty confident that the result would be a much better government for Iraqis, I would support doing it simply for their sake. I don't believe in national sovereignty as an absolute principle, a shield for tyrants; rather I believe that the people deserve to have sovereignty, and in Iraq they do not.
However, a US invasion of Iraq would not be a walkover, and it would create a lot of hostility that might fuel terrorism. Iraqis hate us as much as they hate Hussein. The US would surely impose another regime that would also be nondemocratic. Given that Iraq is not really a threat to the US, I don't think this is justified. As for the danger that Hussein may get weapons of mass destruction, that is a real issue, but we should try to address it first with UN weapons inspections rather than making war the first resort.
Bush, however, is asking Congress for immediate unconditional authorization for war against Iraq. I hope that the Senate will be smart enough to at least insist on time for weapons inspectors to try to go to work, so we can see whether Iraq cooperates.
An Iraqi exile strongly denounces Saddam Hussein's regime.
There are many countries whose unelected rulers really deserve a "regime change", but I still hesitate to advocate war against them. Besides which, we ought to start by cleaning our own house, and replacing the unelected ruler of the United States.
A US judge ruled that the Department of the Interior is lying to the court when it reports on the status of the Indian trust fund it administers.
The threat to prosecute Gush Shalom for warning Israeli officers that their actions violate the Geneva Convention has been dropped.
There is a glut of coffee on the world market, but the four global coffee-selling companies have kept the prices up for consumers. As a result, coffee farmers get just half of one percent of what people in the developed world pay for coffee. They are going broke, and switching to making cocaine instead.
Oxfam is asking the public to help pressure the coffee companies to pay the farmers a more. They could pay the farmers twice as much, and not notice.
Due to the ban on CFCs, the annual "ozone hole" is expected to start shrinking. CFC levels are already starting to decline.
Now that Bush cannot use weapons inspections as an excuse to attack Iraq, will he create another?
US newspapers on Sep 19 have had articles about war plans, almost as if Iraq had never agreed to admit the weapons inspectors.
Now that Iraq says it will admit UN weapons inspectors without conditions, a commentary in the Independent argues that US allies will only support a war against Iraq if Saddam Hussein has first been offered a real way to avoid one.
The Sunday Herald, of Scotland, reports on a secret US plan to attack Iraq, drawn up in 2000 by Dick Cheney, now vice president of the US.
Ten million people in Argentina have joined barter networks as a way to escape the country's financial difficulties.
The UN decided to bury a report about the US bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan, apparently giving in to US pressure.
A peaceful protest before the World Summit on Sustainable Development was attacked for no reason, and then the protest was turned into a stand-off with police.
The article also explains how the US and Europe tried to turn the agenda into one of privatization.
Google is accessible in China again, and there is no indication that it has pledged to enforce pro-Chinese censorship as Yahoo did.
Bush has appealed to the UN to take steps to enforce its resolutions on Iraq. This approach is more deserving of support than what he has been saying before, and has at least a chance of winning the support of some US allies, partly because it gives Iraq the chance to show it is honest--if indeed it is honest--about renouncing weapons of mass destruction.
Greek judges declared a prosecution under the law that bans computer games to be unconstitutional. I am not sure whether they said that any prosecution under that law would be unconstitutional, or just this specific one.
Yasser Arafat's cabinet resigned in order to avoid a vote of no-confidence. A Palestinian election has been set for Jan 20. Will it be possible to hold a campaign and an election under Israeli lockdown?
In the future it will seem a shame to have all this patriotism floating about and no one to destroy.
A clear explanation of the workings of water privatization, as imposed by the World Bank, shows just why it brings in no real investment in improving water systems and cuts off poor people from water supply.
A commentary in the Independent argues that September 11 didn't really change anything, it just gave the US a reminder of how things already were--and the US doesn't want to look.
I don't entirely agree. The terrorist attacks provided a great excuse for labeling dissidents as "terrorists" to suppress political opposition and civil liberties.
A report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies concludes that Iraq's capabilities for weapons of mass destruction are weaker than they were before the Gulf War.
A newspaper story today reported that Democrats in Congress say that the Bush regime has failed to show them any evidence that Iraq presents a pressing danger. "The same as before, with embellishments" is an approximate quote from one.
Yasser Arafat made a statement condemning violence against Israeli citizens, but this is not good enough for Bush, who still demands the Palestinians choose a new leader.
Arafat is reported to run a corrupt regime. If that is true, probably the only thing that keeps him in power is the external menace his people face. Bush, of course, understands this, which is why he is planning to start another war in Iraq. The best way to enable the Palestinians to choose new leaders would be peace.
Former President Carter criticized the Bush administration for trampling civil liberties and canceling important treaties. He also says there is no pressing need to go to war with Iraq.
Greenwash is defined as "Disinformation disseminated by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image." British Petroleum is the winner of the 2002 Best Green Actor award for corporate greenwashing. There were several other awards as well.
A subtle form of greenwashing is when a company donates to a small, attention-grabbing worthy cause so as to distract attention from the much larger and more important things they are failing to do. For instance, Conoco donated funds for Jane Goodall's work to protect chimpanzees; now, of course, she praises Conoco.
Goodall's chimpanzee orphanage is a good thing, but is it a substitute for restraining global warming? Conoco probably thinks it is--they figure that by donating mere millions (my guess) to Goodall's organization, they can go on leading our planet to disaster.
The sad irony is that climate change could potentially wipe out chimpanzees in the wild, or thousands of other species, by shifting the zones where various species and ecosystems can exist. A small sanctuary for a species won't preserve it if, due to climate change, the species can no longer live in that particular area.
Climate change can destroy an ecosystem even when all the organisms in it have room to move to, if the various species that depend on each other can't all move to the same place, or if new enemies move to that place too and kill off some of them that others depend on.
Right-wing death squads have been assassinating Zapatista supporters in Chiapas.
One in five Palestinian children are suffering from serious malnutrition, according to the US Agency for International Development. One quarter of West Bank Palestinians have had to sell personal possessions to put food on the table. The cause of this is the Israeli lockdown ("curfew") which prevents people from doing any sort of business or farming, or even going to buy food if they have money.
Combined with other Israeli policies, this amounts to a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
In Thailand, a critique of modern capitalism from a Buddhist perspective.
I think we should distinguish between the existence of a market where people freely buy and sell, and the system of the US today where companies largely dominate society and shape people's thinking through their public relations departments. Some people refer to the latter as "Capitalism", but that term has historically been used for the former, and I think we should keep it that way. Let's call the latter system, today's destructive system, corporatocracy.
In Africa, where many people have AIDS, Coca Cola's policy is to deny AIDS coverage to over 98% of their employees.
The World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa was programmed for failure by its attempt to gain the support of global megacorporations. They insisted on proposing only one road to development: privatization, trickle-down and austerity. Since they have already spread poverty in much of the undeveloped world, the summit was programmed for failure from the outset.
Dubya, whose financial interests are in oil companies, stayed away from the summit, as Exxon-Mobil asked him to, so as to reduce world attention to it. He left it to the US delegation to block it from achieving anything. The summit conclusively failed when the US joined with OPEC to block any target for renewable energy use.
South Africa adopted the corporate agenda in 1996, and since has privatized the water supply and the electricity. As a result, ten million people have been disconnected from water or electricity. A hundred thousand people became sick with cholera, and 250 died. Their gravestones should read, "murdered by privatization". Many others have been evicted from their homes.
The South African government protected the shiny image of the summit by arresting large numbers of protestors.
Yahoo recently volunteered to conduct censorship on behalf of the Chinese government. Another point of connection between Yahoo and China is that they both treat workers like dirt.
Yahoo subcontracts janitorial services to Team Services Inc., which pays workers just $6.50 an hour--much less, adjusted for inflation, than the minimum wage was 25 years ago. Recently those who tried to form a union were fired.
This makes two reasons to reject Yahoo and support its competitors. If you have a Yahoo account, how about telling the company what you think.
The DEA raided a Santa Cruz medical marijuana collective, arresting its founders, and provoking the condemnation of local officials and police.
This raid is part of a series that seems intended for maximum arrogance and cruelty.
Earlier this year, a tribal council in Pakistan sentenced Mukhtaran Bibi to be raped as punishment for her family. Responding to public pressure, the Pakistani government intervened and put the rapists and council on trial. Some of them have been convicted and sentenced to death.
The convictions may help change an old pattern of behavior that treats women as little more than property of their families. However, the death sentences repeat the brutality of the crime itself.
A school in the village is to be named after Mukhtaran Bibi, who has received compensation from the Pakistani government.
However, death threats against her and her family may make it impossible for her to remain there and teach in it.
Google and Altavista are blocked in China, but Yahoo is still accessible there. Why? Because Yahoo has agreed to censor its postings to avoid criticism of the Chinese government.
I suspect that this is a pressure campaign--that China is hoping that Google and Altavista will likewise surrender to censorship of criticism of China in order to regain access to the Chinese market.
If this scandalizes you, push back! Please forward this note to anyone who sends you mail from a Yahoo email account.
Canadian senate committee recommends legalizing possession and use of marijuana.
A month ago, the president of Birzeit University denounced the then-recent bombing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Now Israeli troops are setting up a military checkpoint at the entrance to Birzeit University, which threatens to effectively shut it down.
Starhawk, watching the destruction caused by the bombing and the suffering caused by the curfew in Jenin, writes about the ethical responsibility for the bomb.
The permanent lockdown in Palestinian cities is making children wonder when they will have a chance to go to school.
The Greek government has banned video games. Even having a copy of a video game on your laptop--and nearly every laptop has some-- is a crime.
