SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
"The American Civil Liberties Union has voiced its support for five students at Bellevue Community College who say their rights were violated last week when they were barred from a campus rally with U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Barack Obama.
"The students say Cantwell staffers did not allow them into Thursday's event because they were wearing red T-shirts with the name of Cantwell's Republican challenger, Mike McGavick.
"They were clearly there to disrupt the event," said Cantwell campaign spokeswoman Amanda Mahnke. She said the students were carrying McGavick signs and refused to take the shirts off or turn them inside out.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: With waterboarding, the prisoner [one hundred suspected terrorists from all over the world are still being held in secret American prisons] is made to feel as though he is drowing, even if he isn't really at risk of dying. There are reports that Mohammed was a kind of unoffical record-holder when it came to waterboarding.
Suskind: With extraordinary minutes passing he earned a sort of grudging respect from interrogators. The thing they did with Mohammed is that we had captured his children, a boy and a girl, age 7 and 9. And at the darkest moment we threatened grievous injury to his children if he did not cooperate. His response was quite clear: "That's fine. You can do what you want to my children, and they will find a better place with Allah."
Found on Angry Arab Newservice
Last photograph of Bradley Roland Will alive, five seconds
before he received two sniper's shots in the stomach
during the ongoing revolt in Oaxaca.
Brad was from New York, participated in a housing
occupation,sued the police for arresting him, won
a settlement and traveled with the money around
the world filming working class uprisings
and peasant revolts.
He was recently in Bolivia, Venezuela,
Argentina...always covering class struggle.
He was connected with Indymedia NY.Picture and Text from Marxmail.org"Now that corruption cases like Enron and WorldCom are falling out of the news, two influential industry groups with close ties to administration officials are hoping to swing the regulatory pendulum in the opposite direction. The groups are drafting proposals to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms from criminal cases brought by federal and state prosecutors as well as a stronger shield against civil lawsuits from investors.
"Although the details are still being worked out, the groups’ proposals aim to limit the liability of accounting firms for the work they do on behalf of clients, to force prosecutors to target individual wrongdoers rather than entire companies, and to scale back shareholder lawsuits.
"The groups hope to reduce what they see as some burdens imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, landmark post-Enron legislation adopted in 2002. The law, which placed significant new auditing and governance requirements on companies, gave broad discretion for interpretation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The groups are also interested in rolling back rules and policies that have been on the books for decades.
"To alleviate concerns that the new Congress may not adopt the proposals — regardless of which party holds power in the legislative branch next year — many are being tailored so that they could be adopted through rulemaking by the S.E.C. and enforcement policy changes at the Justice Department.
"Democratic lawmakers made an effort to stress that support for Israel is a bipartisan issue and that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans in the extent of backing they provide Israel with. At the same time, Rep. Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat, staked out a different view than that of the administration regarding Syria’s latest calls for negotiations with Israel. While the Bush administration reportedly asked Israel to reject talks, Sanchez says that “If Israel believes such a process would lead Syria to abandon support for terrorism and instead embraces peace, then I would welcome such a move.” Sanchez did, however, emphasize that the Democrats oppose removing Syria from the State Department list of states that sponsor terrorism.
"Many of the questions in the online town hall meeting were from Democrats worried about the new book by former president Jimmy Carter and about claims that the Democrats are not as pro-Israeli as the Republicans.
Angry Arab Newservice
"Pelosi repeated her criticism of Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” saying he does not represent the Democratic Party on this issue. Hastings said that those who do not support Israel are only on the fringes of the party.
"Nato forces in Afghanistan have killed scores of civilians in a single operation, bombing them in their own homes as they celebrated the end of Ramadan.
"Nato commanders were facing serious questions yesterday as the Afghan government said it had confirmed that at least 40 civilians were killed in Nato bombing raids in Panjwayi district, near Kandahar.
"Nato said its own initial investigation found that only 12 "non-combatants" were killed, but it had no explanation for the discrepancy with the government's figures. Local Afghan officials said they believed as many as 85 civilians died - which would make the incident the worst single atrocity committed by Western forces in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.
I think this was Angry Arab Newservice."While the number of pro-life Democrats still represents a small fraction of the party's candidates, the views they represent have begun to exert a disproportionate influence over its direction. The perceived need to engage with Christian voters prompted Hilary Clinton's recalibration of her abortion position from safe, legal and rare, to safe, legal and never.
"The party's repositioning on this issue is part of a wider attempt to reconnect with cultural conservatives on a basket of issues including guns, gay marriage and the role of the church in people's lives. The Democratic leadership has recognised that the White House will continue to elude them if they appear culturally out of sync with a middle America, for whom faith and traditional family values direct choices at the ballot box.
"So far, the liberal wing of the Democratic party has stayed remarkably mute during the party's shift to the new middle. Expediency has been the byword, especially as the Democrats are so tantalisingly close to regaining one or both Houses of Congress. But as '08 approaches, the Republicans will be ruthless in flushing out dissension in the ranks.
"WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — A former White House budget official who became entangled in the criminal investigation of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in prison for lying about his relationship to Mr. Abramoff.
"The former official, David H. Safavian, wept as he pleaded for leniency from Judge Paul L. Friedman in Federal District Court here. The judge used the sentencing hearing to speak out against what he said was a growing culture of corruption in Washington encouraged by high-priced lobbyists.
“He came to work in an environment that has become, frankly, more and more corrupt,” Judge Friedman said in announcing Mr. Safavian’s sentence, which was half of the three-year prison term sought by the Justice Department.
“It’s become corrupted by money,” Judge Friedman added. “You’ve literally got lobbyists sitting in Congressional offices writing legislation. That’s what’s going on.”
"Mr. Safavian’s crimes, he said, were a “classic case of abuse of the public’s trust.”
"Mr. Safavian was convicted in June of lying to federal investigators about Mr. Abramoff and the circumstances of his decision to join the lobbyist on a golfing trip to Scotland by private jet in 2002.
Savavian's take on things:"Mr. Safavian, who resigned in December as head of federal procurement policies at the White House budget office, was the first person to go to trial in the investigation and, even Friday, did not concede that he had lied to investigators or obstructed justice, the crimes for which he was convicted.
"Choking back tears, he stood before Judge Friedman and insisted that while his actions might have created the appearance of impropriety, “there was no conspiracy to defraud anybody, least of all taxpayers.” He said that while “Jack Abramoff was my friend, he wasn’t my co-conspirator and I wasn’t his.”
The non-partisan Center, which has been tracking the money in federal politics since the 1980s, based its 2006 prediction on spending to date and the final tally for the 2002 midterm election. In 2004, which included a presidential contest, the election cost $4.2 billion. About $2.2 billion was spent in 2002, which preceded campaign finance reforms that limited the influence of large corporate and union donors. The estimate for 2006 would represent an 18% increase over ’02.
Found on Angry Arab Newservice
"The problem for the US and British is that many Iraqi leaders outside the government think the British and Americans are on the run. Wait, they say, and they will become even weaker. The US is talking to senior Baath party military officials in Saudi Arabia and Jordan who control the insurgency if anybody does. But it is unlikely that they would call a ceasefire except on terms wholly unacceptable to other Iraqis.
"Can the US extract itself from Iraq? Probably it could but only with great loss of face which the present administration could not endure after its boasts of victory three-and-a-half years ago.
"What happens when the war is lost but the fighting continues?
"We are about to find out.
"There are now 650,000 reasons for withdrawing from Iraq and for allowing events to take their course. Iraq's militias are presently locked in mortal combat to determine the ultimate political make-up of the future Iraq. We should stand down and let that process unfold. The belief that we need to supervise the transition is just more paternalistic claptrap intended to support the ongoing occupation. The Iraqis want us out of their affairs and out of their country.
"We've turned Iraq into a charnel house; unleashing the full-force of the world's most powerful military on a small country that never posed a threat to our national security. That's enough. It's time to end the occupation and bring the troops home.
From Counterpunch.org
"More than 100 U.S. service members have signed a rare appeal urging Congress to support the "prompt withdrawal" of all American troops and bases from Iraq, organizers said yesterday.
"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home," reads the statement of a small grass-roots group of active-duty military personnel and reservists that says it aims to give U.S. military members a voice in Iraq war policy.
From Washington Post via Angry Arab Newservice
"Once again, demonstrating there is essentially no difference between Democrats and Republicans, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has told CBS’s 60 Minutes that the war criminal cabal deserves to escape justice. “Wouldn’t they just love it if we came in and our record as Democrats coming forth after 12 years is to talk about George Bush and Dick Cheney? This election is about them. This is a referendum on them. Making them lame ducks is good enough for me.”
"According to Pelosi, prosecuting Bush and Cheney for torturing children, killing 650,000 Iraqis, and destroying the United States economy is “off the table.” Of course, this makes sense, as Democrats will continue killing Iraqis and deficit spending the nation into bankruptcy.
"Finally, making Bush and Cheney—that is to say, the neocons—lame ducks will add a jolt of adrenalin to the neocon plan to decimate the Muslim and Arab Middle East, lest the neolib faction, under a Democrat president and Congress, go back to its old ways, that is, instead of mass murdering Iranians in one fell swoop, imposing the sort of sanctions levied against Iraq under Clinton, resulting in the slow death of 1.5 million Iraqis, 500,000 of them children.
"We can only hope, when the day finally arrives, Nancy Pelosi will be paraded before the world in her stylish orange jumpsuit, along with Bush, Cheney, and the vile neocons.
"Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
"In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.
"The Nambla [National Man Boy Love Association] charge has also been thrown at Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco congresswoman who would become the next Speaker of the House if the Democrats win a majority on 7 November and who has thus become a multi-purpose pincushion for the Republicans. The maverick right-winger and erstwhile presidential candidate Pat Buchanan told a television interviewer this week that Ms Pelosi had been on gay pride parades where Nambla members were also present and had thus been "marching with paedophiles".
******
Commentary on the above article by a Marxmail correspondent:
"After blaming demon rum failed to deflect attention from Foley's tasteless, but so far totally legal, e-mails, he now drags up youthful massages from his priest, apparently on grounds that decades-old massages lead to sending tacky e-mails. It's gratifying to see an antigay oinker like Foley bite the dust, but don't expect the toadying U.S. gay groups to show any principles or backbone by pointing to the fact that man-boy friendships go on in every American neighborhood and have existed throughout human history--nor that NAMBLA is not a "pedophile" organization, but rather a group that advocates sexual freedom for consenting individuals (a goal of the Stonewall revolution that groups like Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force long ago abandoned). Foley's attraction to teenage youths shows that he's a pederast, not a pedophile, but such distinctions mean nothing to the antisex gestapo or to "leading" gay and lesbian groups. These groups are too busy trying to get married and aping heterosexuals to defend relationships and attractions that were embraced by many of history's same-sexers, whom they nevertheless continue to claim as part of the homosexual heritage. Like Stalin, they prefer to rewrite history, and ignore science and reality, in their quest for acceptance by the heterosexist dictatorship. For America's pathetic and incompetent one-party system, focusing on sexual pecadilloes is a convenient way to cover up the crimes of both Democrats and Republicans in killing off innocent youth in Iraq to advance their imperialist goals and financial scams, in genuflecting before a private-enterprise ripoff health system instead of junking it for socialized medicine or a single-payer system, in supporting a police state and building prisons for all the victims of their failed drug war and their criminalization of any sexual behavior that falls outside their shrinking definition of bourgeois morality. The bigger scandal is that most U.S. gay/lez groups don't have the principles or the cojones to stand up for truth and freedom. Indeed, they have helped to lay the groundwork for witchhunts by adopting the heterosexist, police, bourgeois feminist, and psychiatric lingo whereby love is rape, the erect cock is a weapon of torture rather than an instrument of pleasure, and dirty (gay) old men are a threat to innocent youth."
It's a good thing someone makes a corrective comment on Stan's website, Feral Scholar, after this. --Linda
"I abstained from the last election because the Democratic Party took the issue of the war off the table; and because I believed the world would be better off after the Bush adminstration spent a bit more time exposing the true character of today’s mono-imperialism. I still stand by that.
"This year, however, I will work a polling site for the Democrats.
"My “issue,” if we are restricted to one, is the war. The majority of my fellow US voters now agree with my position that the US needs to get its ass out. I’m all about “cut and run,” and may get a nice t-shirt saying just that. But a lot more has happened, and even though it took a sex scandal to hit the tipping point, the polarization of American society ( a good thing, in my view) has increased, there is rumbling from the ‘hood to the ‘burbs, and political changeovers are inherently destabilizing (also a good thing). This disequilibrium creates space for popular movements to operate.
"Moreover, the actual period is unique. The Republicans have made an absolute shambles of everything (give them enough rope…), so much so that the Dems will unlikely be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again. The Dems are looking to 2008. If they take the House of both the House and Senate this year, then they will chair all the committees. Motivated by the need to shred the Republican Party prior to posting whichever nitwit they post for the 2008 Presidential Follies, they can use those committee chairs to issue subpeonaes… lots of subpoenaes, subpoenaes like snowflakes fluttering across the Ameircan political landscape.
Which Democrats have "put the war back on the table, Stan????" And what makes you think that having voted in their "saviours," the "movement" will stick around to make sure they do right? The antiwar movement here in Washington state seems to be falling into line behind Senator Cantwell who voted for the war, the Patriot Act and most every other bad thing in sight. Even though they have two genuine antiwar candidates (a Green and a Libertarian) to vote for. She doesn't seem to be feeling much pressure to change her ways, much as we are trying with the Green Party's campaign behind Aaron Dixon.
"Cantwell, 47, faced a rebellion earlier in the year from the left flank of her party angered over her vote in favor of the Iraq war and her refusal to recant. Anti-war protesters dogged her events [Hmmm wonder who that was???] and her backers worried that her Seattle-area base might defect in droves, throwing a close election to McGavick.
"But over time, she and party elders persuaded the disaffected voters to come home. She managed to get two of her strongest anti-war critics to abandon their own Senate campaigns and join her team, paying one $8,000 a month to be her outreach director to the left wing.
She eventually said she would have voted against the 2002 war authorization if she had known that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
"Despite her apparent opposition to torture, Hillary Clinton said in a Daily News editorial board meeting yesterday that the practice is acceptable in some circumstances.
"Clinton got a rousing reception from the human rights community, and seemed to take an uncharacteristically bright-line stance, in a recent statement on the Senate floor during the debate over torture.
"Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach?" she asked at one point, and left anti-torture commentators, and even Clinton critics like Andrew Sullivan, with the impression that she'd emerged into a kind of un-Clintonian moral clarity and said no to torture.
"But at yesterday's Daily News editorial board meeting, it emerged that she's not actually against torture in all instances, and that her dispute with McCain and Bush is largely procedural.
"She was asked about the "ticking time bomb" scenario, in which you've captured the terrorist and don't have time for a normal interrogation, and said that there is a place for what she called "severity," in a conversation that included mentioning waterboarding, hypothermia, and other techniques commonly described as torture.
"I have said that those are very rare but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that," she responded. "Again, I think the President has to take responsibilty. There has to be some check and balance, some reporting. I don't mind if it’s reporting in a top secret context. But that shouldn’t be the tail that wags the dog, that should be the exception to the rule."
"Seattle Police arrested Green Party candidate Aaron Dixon for trespassing after he tried to push his way into a U.S. Senate debate at KING 5 Television Tuesday afternoon.
"The debate was taped at 2 p.m. for broadcast at 9 p.m.
"Witnesses say Dixon attempted to push into the building after he was told by KING 5 staff that he was not allowed to enter. Seattle Police officers took him into custody for trespassing.
"Dozens of supporters and protesters filled the sidewalks outside KING 5 waving signs and chanting, "Let him go!"
"Dixon was not among the candidates that met KING 5's criteria of public support and fundraising to qualify for the debate. Maria Cantwell, Mike McGavick and Bruce Guthrie met those qualifications.
"Washington voters are being asked this fall to repeal a tax that very, very few residents - or their relatives - ever will pay.
"The tax in question is the estate tax, and it will hit an estimated 210 Washington estates this year. That's a tiny fraction of the more than 45,000 people expected to die, according to state Department of Revenue data. The tax puts about $100 million a year into public schools and college enrollment slots.
"Initiative 920 would repeal the tax, along with the revenue for schools, which has prompted a costly fight by the state's teacher union and tax-fairness advocates to retain the tax.
"The leading supporters of I-920 include ultra-conservative tax activist Dennis Falk of Fox Island and two major business associations. So far, the pro-I-920 campaign is funded heavily by donations from a Seattle developer, Martin Selig, who put in $840,000 to help get the measure qualified for the Nov. 7 ballot using paid signature-gatherers.
Thanks to the Olmpian for this illuminating article."Lynddie England, the young woman associated with some of the most notorious photographs to emerge from Abu Ghraib, has offered new insights into the abuse scandal that rocked the US military and revealed how she acted to please her former lover.
"Speaking for the first time since she was jailed more than a year ago, England revealed the abusive nature of her relationship with fellow reservist Charles Graner and suggested that her actions inside the Baghdad jail were largely directed by him. She has also reiterated claims made by her lawyers that much of the mistreatment of prisoners was carried out at the behest of military intelligence officers or the CIA.
From The Independent via Angry Arab Newservice.The woman who came forward with this is very courageous, considering what she is up against.--Linda
"SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A paralegal and a military lawyer who brought forward allegations about prisoner abuse at the Guantanamo Bay detention center have been ordered not to speak with the press, lawyers and a military spokeswoman said.
"Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, who represents a detainee at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, filed a complaint with the Pentagon last week alleging that abuse was ongoing at the prison. He attached a sworn statement from his paralegal, Sgt. Heather Cerveny, in which she said several Guantanamo guards bragged in a bar about beating detainees, describing it as common practice.
"A Kenyan judge, Arthur Cram, offered a damning verdict after an investigation into torture, murder and cover-up at one interrogation centre, not under Gavaghan, by drawing comparisons with infamous Nazi labour camps. "They not only knew of the shocking floggings that went on in this Kenya Nordhausen, or Mathausen, but must be taken to be the men who were said to have carried them out. From the brutalising of flogging it is only a step to taking life without qualm," he said in his judgment.
"The executioners were also working at a rate unprecedented in the final years of the British Empire. At the height of the emergency, about 50 Kenyans a month were being hanged for rebellion. Prominent Britons, including Bertrand Russell, Michael Foot and Tony Benn, wrote to a senior Kenyan cabinet minister objecting to the numbers of people executed for offences other than murder. The letter noted that in the two years to November 1954, 756 Africans were hanged, more than 500 of them for crimes other than murder and 290 for "unlawful possession of weapons". Only a minority of the 1,090 eventually executed for Mau Mau-related offences during the emergency were convicted of killings.
"What some saw as the inevitable outcome of the camp regimes was realised in March 1959 at a place called Hola, where African guards clubbed 11 prisoners to death while European officers looked on. The camp authorities immediately moved to cover up the cause of the killings. When the local district officer, Willoughby Thompson, arrived, he was told that the dead Mau Mau prisoners were overcome by heat and that water had been thrown over them and they had drowned. Thompson described the explanation as "very improbable", but it was accepted by the colony's governor, Baring, and passed on to London. The truth came out in part because Nyingi and other prisoners gave accounts at an inquiry into the killing of the 11 inmates. The investigating magistrate, W H Goudie, blamed officially sanctioned brutality for the deaths.
"An official report into the emergency concluded that about 12,000 Mau Mau were killed in the conflict. Some historians put the figure much higher. But the numbers are not what concerns the former prisoners now suing the British government. They are worried that their accounts will not be believed in London because the British do not think they are capable of such abuses. "The British see themselves as good," says Njero Mugo, another veteran of the camps. "But from the day the first missionaries arrived we never believed that the British stood for the rule of law. They stole our land. They treated us as though they had more right to be in our country than we did. Did you know that if you were walking down the street and you met a white person you had to remove your hat?"
Found on Angry Arab Newservice"In return the US agreed to recognise North Korea's territorial integrity and eschew all hostile actions. The Bush administration thereby effectively withdrew its earlier threats of forcible regime change levelled against a founder member of President George Bush's "axis of evil".
"The US also promised to move towards normalised relations if Pyongyang kept its side of the bargain. It even revived the idea of helping North Korea build a light-water nuclear reactor for civilian power generation, a scheme promoted by the Clinton administration in the 1990s but later dropped by Mr Bush.
"The September deal brought sighs of relief across Asia and in Washington, where rightwing newspaper editorials hailed a "triumph of US policy". It spawned talk of a new era of strategic cooperation between the US and China, a denuclearised Korean peninsula, and the peaceful reunification of North and South Korea.
"But the celebrations were premature. For reasons that remain unclear, the US treasury department chose almost the exact moment the deal was struck to move against a Macau-based bank called Banco Delta Asia.
I believe I found this on Angry Arab."Arriving in Iraq in November 2004, he said he was stunned at the number of Iraqis he was assigned to interrogate who were either innocent or disgruntled citizens resentful about the American occupation. He said he told his commander: “Your soldiers and the way they’re behaving are creating the insurgency you’re trying to fight. It’s a cycle. You don’t see it, but I’m talking to the people you’re bringing to me.”
"Sergeant Clousing said he looked into the eyes of the Iraqi teenager as he died and saw the unjustifiable loss of a life that unhinged him. He wrote in his journal, “I want to be a boy again, free of this.”
"There is a great deal of material available to the Democrats to offer an alternative, much of it the product of the military reform movement of the 1970s and '80s. Gary Hart can tell them all about it. There is even a somewhat graceful way out of Iraq, if the Dems will ask themselves my favorite foreign policy question, WWBD – What Would Bismarck Do? He would transfer sufficient Swiss francs to interested parties so that the current government of Iraq asks us to leave. They, not we, would then hold the world's ugliest baby, even though it was America's indiscretion that gave the bastard birth.
"But donkeys will think when pigs fly. A Democratic Congress will be as stupid, cowardly, and corrupt as its Republican predecessor; in reality, both parties are one party, the party of successful career politicians. The White House will continue a lost war in Iraq, solely to dump the mess in the next president's lap. America or Israel will attack Iran, pulling what's left of the temple down on our heads. Congress will do nothing to stop either war.
"By 2008, I may not be the only monarchist in America.
Found on Antiwar.com
"The past few weeks have seen a fiesta of these rational, liberal people who dominate British mainstream politics. For them, the most basic forms of morality and shame, the kind you learn as a child, have no place in public life. On Sept. 27, the Guardian published a front-page photograph of Tony Blair, a prima facie war criminal, his arms outstretched, his grin fixed. Beside this was a headline, "Charm and eloquence. But a missed chance." Beneath this, Polly Toynbee wrote: "There were some damp eyes dabbed with hankies and men blowing noses. 'Don't go,' someone said."
"Consider such vomit against the facts of Blair's actual crime – the unprovoked invasion of a defenseless country, justified by lies now voluminously documented, and causing the violent deaths of tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Indeed, according to a study published in The Lancet, the British medical journal, 655,000 civilians have died as a result of the Anglo-American invasion. The word "crime" is verboten among those about whom Victor Jara sang. To spell out the truth would illuminate the collusion of an entire political class. Instead, the shameless neither-fish-nor-fowl tribunes speak and write incessantly of a "mistake," a "blunder," even a Shakespearean tragedy (for the war criminal, not his victims). From their studios and editorial offices, they declare the mendacious and dishonest banalities of their unclad emperor "brilliant." Al-Qaeda, said Blair in his speech to the Labor Party conference, "killed 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of." The breath is swept away by this one statement. Half a million infants lie dead, according to UNICEF, as a result of the Anglo-American siege of Iraq during the 1990s. For Blair and his rational, liberal, neither-fish-nor-fowl court, these children never lived and never died. Clearly, the Emperor Tony was a leader for his time and, above all, clubbable, whatever the "mistakes" he had made in Iraq.
From Antiwar.com"Perhaps the greatest success of the two ruling parties has been their ability to project themselves as the only institutions with major constituencies. As a result, peace partisans have internalized their status as a fringe movement. We have become a minority in our own minds. Many of us sit at home frustrated in the ‘knowledge’ that we’re the very last peaceniks on the planet. A casual head count of your neighbors, relatives and friends should convince you otherwise. Just take a look around you. How many war rallies do you see?
"On the issues of peace and justice, Nader is no fringe candidate. In fact, peace is the single issue most likely to appeal to both liberals and conservatives.
Found on Whiskey Bar, Billmon
"[S]hooting Palestinian civilians is not like shooting Vietnamese or Chechen civilians. The Palestinians aren't 'collateral damage' in a war against well-armed communist or separatist forces. They are being shot because Israel thinks all Palestinians should vanish or die, so people with one Jewish grandparent can build subdivisions on the rubble of their homes. This is not the bloody mistake of a blundering superpower but ... the deliberate strategy of a state conceived in and dedicated to an increasingly vicious ethnic nationalism. --What is Antisemitism? by Michael Neumann; 4 June 2002.
Cartoon: Mr Fish, for Harper's Magazine.
"Neighbors report that Israeli soldiers had been beating her husband because he wasn't answering their questions. Foolishly or valiantly, how is one to say, the 35-year-old woman had interfered. She tried to explain that her husband was deaf, screamed at the soldiers that her husband couldn't hear them and attempted to stop them from hitting him. So they shot her. Several times.
"Her name was Itemad Ismail Abu Mo'ammar.
"She didn't die, though. That took longer. It required her life to flow out of her in the form of blood for several hours, as Israeli soldiers refused to allow an ambulance to transport her to help. Her husband and children could do nothing to save her.
"Finally, after approximately five hours, an ambulance was allowed to take her to a hospital, where physicians were able to render one service: pronounce her dead, a few days before the commencement of Ramadan, a season of family gatherings much like the Christmas season for Americans. She left 11 children. None of this was in the Washington Post story, which had reported her death in one half of one sentence.
"Her husband's brother, who lived in the same house, was also killed. He was a 28-year-old farmer.
From Alison Weir at If Americans Knew via Counterpunch
"Recent studies show that Puget Sound's herring -- a key link in the food chain -- contain higher contamination levels than those in Europe's highly polluted Baltic Sea. In May, leading federal and state scientists reported that the "food web of Puget Sound appears to be more seriously contaminated than previously anticipated."
"And orcas now are among the more chemically contaminated marine mammals in the world's oceans.
So convenient to quote Cantwell's campaign manager, rather than Maria herself--is Maria "evolving" her position. Smacks of plausible deniability to me. Even then it's a hardly a call to bring them home now.
"McGavick loves to say he and Cantwell have the same position on the war. They did for about a minute.
"Cantwell voted for the war resolution in 2002 and has been reluctant to apologize for it or take it back, as other Democrats have.
"Her position, however, has been evolving. In May, she said 2006 should be a year of transition in Iraq. No one quite knew what that mushy sentence meant, but over time she has added new phrases and adjusted a bit.
"In June, she supported a resolution saying troop redeployment should begin by the end of the year. In July, her campaign manager, Michael Meehan, said the senator is for changing course and believes troops should begin coming home by the end of the year and "30,000 is not enough."
"Follow the bouncing ball.
"McGavick's position is closer to the president's. He is not for any so-called "political timetable," and no scheduled withdrawal. But he criticizes the president for underestimating, from the beginning, the symbolic and psychological importance of securing Baghdad.
"It is a story familiar to women across Iraq, betrayed by the country's new constitution that guaranteed them a 25 per cent share of membership of the Council of Representatives. That guarantee has turned instead into a fig leaf hiding what women activists now call a 'human rights catastrophe for Iraqi women'.
"After a month-long investigation, The Observer has established that in almost every major area of human rights, women are being seriously discriminated against, in some cases seeing their conditions return to those of females in the Middle Ages. In areas such as the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City in east Baghdad, women have been beaten for not wearing socks. Even the headscarf and juba - the ankle-length, flared coat that buttons to the collar - are not enough for the zealots. Some women have been threatened with death unless they wear the full abbaya, the black, all-encompassing veil.
"Similar reports are emerging from Mosul, where it is Sunni extremists who are laying down the law, and Kirkuk. Women from Karbala, Hilla, Basra and Nassariyah have all told The Observer similar stories. Of the insidious spread of militia and religious party control - and how members of those same groups are, paradoxically, increasingly responsible for the rape and murder of women outside their sects and communities."I was watching CNN yesterday. It was All Penis, All the Time.
"Here’s a quote, from one of their reporters, “One question always rises to the top who knew what, and when did they know it?”
"That’s true, but only when it has to do with a penis.
"Last week Bob Woodward’s new book came out. One of the things he revealed was an additional meeting between the head of the CIA and Condoleeza Rice, back in July, 2001, in which he tried to shock her, shake her up so she would do something about terrorism.
"That meeting is important for several reasons.
"The fact that she didn’t anything about it led to the deaths of at least 3,000 people. Call me crazy, call me irresponsible, but that seems more important than an old queen hitting on young teens.
"MADRID -- When Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega graduated from law school in the 1970s, Spanish law prohibited her -- and any other woman -- from becoming a judge, serving as a witness in court or opening a bank account.
"Today, the angular, outspoken 57-year-old is Spain's first female vice president, helping orchestrate a cultural revolution in the boardrooms and living rooms of the country that coined the word machismo -- male chauvinism -- five centuries ago.
"We have a prime minister who not only says he's a feminist -- he acts like a feminist," Fernandez de la Vega said in her cavernous office of polished wood floors and cream-colored sofas. "In two and one-half years, we have done more than has ever been done in such a short time in Spain."
"Her Socialist government is requiring political parties to allot 40 percent of their candidate lists to women and is telling big companies to give women 40 percent of the seats on corporate boards. Half of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero's cabinet members are women -- the highest proportion in any government in Europe.
****also in article:
"The push for gender equality in one of Europe's most macho cultures comes as both internal and outside forces are creating seismic social shifts: Spanish women are taking greater control of their own lives by waiting longer to marry and having fewer children. The European Union is exerting more pressure on members to enforce equality. And the growth of high-tech businesses with a greater sensitivity to hiring women is expanding job opportunities."
Found on Angry Arab NewserviceIf you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear [power] is really very good.Contrary to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's assessment, nuclear power and nuclear devices have not enjoyed a safe history at United States facilities. At least 50 nuclear weapons lie on the ocean bottom due to U.S. and Soviet accidents. A large number of incidents mar the safety record of nuclear plants, facilities, bombers and ships, of which Three Mile Island is only the best remembered. Numerous deaths and injuries resulted from these incidents. In addition to accidents, the day-to-day operations related to nuclear materials processing and handling have led to massive contamination of this country's landscape. The U.S. Department of Energy spends over $4 billion each year for the restoration and management of sites contaminated by nuclear materials. Their 2000 Federal budget noted: "The Environmental Management (EM) program is responsible for addressing the environmental legacy resulting from the production of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons complex generated waste, pollution, and contamination that pose unique problems, including unprecedented volumes of contaminated soil and water, radiological hazards from special nuclear material, and a vast number of contaminated structures. Factories, laboratories, and thousands of square miles of land were devoted to producing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Much of this is largely maintained, decommissioned, managed, and remediated by the EM program, which is sometimes referred to as the 'cleanup program.' EM's responsibilities include facilities and sites in 30 states and one territory, and occupy an area equal to that of Rhode Island and Delaware combined - or about 2.1 million acres."
-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, June 2001
"Employing civilian contractors supposedly saves money in the long run and, more importantly, frees trained soldiers for battle. The notion of low expenditure stemmed from the assumption that civilian contractors were hired for temporary/emergency engagements. This assumption no longer holds worth in the face of the current long-term (permanent) guerrilla war (read-Iraq and Afghanistan) without clear front-lines.
"Given the astronomical profits posted by these defense contractors, in addition to widespread fraud and waste, it is difficult to believe that any administration would want to adhere to this model, unless of course certain members of that administration were financially profiting from it.
"Those vague front lines stretch all the way back home, for it was at home that Tim Eysselinck became one of the thousands of uncounted and unaccounted-for civilian casualties in Cheney's so-called war on terror.
KEDUNGBENDO, Indonesia, Oct. 5 — It started as a natural gas well. It has become geysers of mud and water, and in a country plagued by earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis another calamity in the making, though this one is largely man-made.
Eight villages are completely or partly submerged, with homes and more than 20 factories buried to the rooftops. Some 13,000 people have been evacuated. The four-lane highway west of here has been cut in two, as has the rail line, dealing a serious blow to the economy of this region in East Java, an area vital to the country’s economy. The muck has already inundated an area covering one and a half square miles.
And it shows no signs of stopping.
The mud is rising by the hour, and now spewing forth at the rate of about 170,000 cubic yards a day, or about enough to cover Central Park.
Foreign companies, environmental groups and political observers are now watching closely to see whether the government will hold the company that drilled the well accountable for the costs of the cleanup, which could easily reach $1 billion.
