Erakat: Proposal is ‘severe blow to peace process’ 15 April 2004 | CNN WASHINGTON — President Bush endorsed an Israeli plan Wednesday to pull back from Gaza and part of the West Bank, but denied the United States was taking sides in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At a White House news briefing following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Bush said “realities on the ground” dictated that Israel should be able to keep some settlements in any future peace agreement. Bush praised Sharon for his withdrawal proposal. “These are historic and courageous actions,” Bush said. “If all parties […]
Brendan
1167 posts
[ From the review: … it would be hard to overemphasize the awkwardness with which [LaHaye/Jenkins] blend[] folksy humour, treacly sentiment and religiously justified bloodbaths. The Left Behind books have been energetically condemned by mainstream reviewers in the United States — not least by more orthodox Christians, who have been as offended by LaHaye?s manglings of biblical tradition as they have by his uncompromising sectarian zeal. Nevertheless, the series?s visions of beleaguered yet plucky evangelists speaks powerfully to the many millions of believers whom secular as well as religious ideologues have been mobilizing since the late 1970s. President Bush — […]
May 19, 2004 | NBC News BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi officials said a U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, including children. Senior Pentagon officials confirmed that approximately 40 were killed in an airstrike near the Syrian border, but they told NBC News that the incident involved an AC-130 warship — not a helicopter — and that the aircraft returned fire after coming under attack from militants. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the divergent accounts or even verify that both descriptions were of the same incident. Lt. Col. Ziyad […]
[ This article is one of the better recaps and analyses of the Sudan crisis. –BL ] 17 May 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by Brian Smith The ongoing conflict in Sudan?s Darfur region has increasingly taken the form of ethnic cleansing, with numerous reports of the direct targeting of civilian populations. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have just released reports revealing the extent of the atrocities. HRW believes that there can be ?no doubt about the Sudanese government’s culpability in crimes against humanity in Darfur.?
The road to Abu Ghraib began after 9/11, when Washington wrote new rules to fight a new kind of war. A NEWSWEEK investigation Officials in Colin Powell’s State Department were ‘horrified’ by the Bush administration’s apparent willingness to ignore Geneva protocols Tough tactics: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pushed for a Gitmo style approach to prisoner interrogations in Iraq May 24, 2004 | Newsweek by John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff It’s not easy to get a member of Congress to stop talking. Much less a room full of them. But as a small group of legislators watched the images […]
1,300 OHIOANS JOBLESS May 18, 2004 | THE DAILY MIS-LEAD Last April, President Bush visited a Timken Company manufacturing plant in Ohio to press for passage of new tax cuts that he said would spur the economy. During the speech Bush said that "the future of this company is bright and therefore, the future of employment is bright for the families that work here" (1). Less than a year after the tax cuts for the wealthy passed, that same factory is shutting down — putting about 1,300 people out of work (2) and inflicting a "devastating" blow to the Canton […]
[ Chip Ward, ecological writer and activist and Assistant Director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System, presents a positive ecological vision of the future. As Tom Engelhardt points out, “this piece is … a set of Cliff Notes for the new book [Chip has] just published, Hope’s Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land.” Thanks to Popi and Tom Natsoulas for passing this piece along. –BL ] May 13, 2004 | TomDispatch.com by Chip Ward Imagine America in 2104. From the air, what you see is a largely unbroken, green, and fluid realm with graceful and permeable natural […]
15 May 2004 | Daytona News-Journal by BILL HILL Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics.
[ Below are excerpts from the latest Seymour Hersh article on Abu Ghraib. –BL ] by SEYMOUR M. HERSH 15 May 2004 | The New Yorker (May 24 issue) …. The success of the war was at risk; something had to be done to change the dynamic. The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention and interrogation center at Guant?namo, who had been summoned to Baghdad in […]
[ This Saletan piece follows up an earlier one addressing the Stanford Prison Experiment. Saletan points out dynamics other than the guard-prisoner social structure that account for the Abu Ghraib abuses. Thanks to Alexandra Dadlez for the forward. –BL ] by William Saletan May 12, 2004 | Slate Are the American soldiers who abused Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison “a few who have betrayed our values,” as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims? Or are they victims of a prison system guaranteed to produce atrocities? In recent days, the latter view has taken hold, buttressed by the Stanford Prison Experiment, a […]
[ From the article: “The idea of [abuses at Abu Ghraib] being ‘a few bad apples’ won’t wash. It looks increasingly like a systematic process. And there have clearly been conscious attempts by psychologists to make the techniques culturally relative to a Muslim population,” [Sherman Carroll of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London] added, referring to reports of enforced nakedness, the simulation of oral sex, forced masturbation and naked human pyramids which seemed calculated particularly to offend followers of Islam. –BL ] by Paul Vallely 14 May 2004 | The Independent
[ For more on Negroponte, click here. This is a translated piece. –BL ] Honduras: Negroponte in the sights 14 May 2004 | Diario La República/AFP [Peru] Honduran authorities are investigating whether the torture manual allegedly used by US troops in Iraq was used in that country in the 1980s, said Minister of Defense, Federico Breve. The functionary in charge of Human Rights, Ramon Custodio, stated that “the tortures that are used on Iraqi prisoners coincide with the hood, electroshocks, blows, and the humiliation and degradation to which prisoners in Honduras were subjected.” For its part, coordinator of the Committee of […]
The same, only different: Reflections on the myth of American Exceptionalism May 13, 2004 | ZMag.org by Tim Wise Though I have little faith in his ability to detect (or even define) irony, it would be interesting to know what the President thinks about the decision to reopen the investigation into the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, in 1955. Especially since Mr. Bush has spent the better part of the past week insisting that the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib is inconsistent with the character and spirit of America and Americans. We, so the story goes, are […]
Powell: Bush & Rumsfeld Saw Red Cross Prison Reports 13 May 2004 | DemocracyNow! A day after appearing again on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took a secret trip to Baghdad today to meet with senior US military officials. He said he wanted to ensure that detainees were being treated properly. On Wednesday Rumsfeld admitted that the prison abuse scandal could deliver a “body blow” to U.S. efforts in Iraq. Meanwhile Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that Rumsfeld and President Bush were both fully informed of the concerns of the International Committee of the Red Cross about […]
[ While I’m not saying there is a conspiracy, it’s worth listening to the case — especially because there is now doubt as to who detained Berg (according to CBS, “The family … claimed the U.S. government detained him just before militants kidnapped him. But the FBI says Iraqi police detained Nick Berg, and the Iraqi police say they did not”). A theory along these lines is explored by James Conachy on the World Socialist Web Site (14 May 2004). Conachy points out that Questions immediately arise from the timing and political consequences of his killing. At the height of […]
Hello, Pay Phone Information? Enthusiast Provides the Answer May 13, 2004 | New York Times by IAN URBINA It started as an art project. Blue spiral notebook in hand, Mark Thomas spent afternoons walking the streets of Manhattan, compiling the numbers and locations of public pay phones. He posted them on his Web site in the hope that people would call them. “There is real beauty in whimsical acts of contact between strangers,” he explained. Soon his list expanded to include public phones at the top of the Eiffel Tower, in the basement of the Vatican, in the middle of […]
[ Senator Inhofe is an embarrasment to Oklahoma. His recent, Limbaugh-esque defense of the abusers at Abu Ghraib (see below) reveals either culpable ignorance or an outright evil character: “[T]hese prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.” One imagines a Jesus, whom Inhofe and his ilk claim to follow, shocked at the callous disregard for so many innocent non-Americans. For a glimpse into these minds and their high tolerance for violence in the Middle East, see this piece from […]
[ From the article: The vast majority of Jews desperately want to avoid a full-scale conflagration between Israel and the Arab world. Dispensationalists don’t. In the dispensationalist narrative, Christians will be raptured to heaven before all the fighting between Jews and Muslims starts. Everyone left will face mass death and destruction… Thus evangelical Christians’ support for policies like the permanent takeover the West Bank and Gaza and even, in some cases, the expulsion of Palestinians into Jordan, should be understood in the context of a worldview in which world war is inevitable….. Dispensationalist Christians believe that this is all in […]
Death and taxes: The unconscionable connection May 2004 | Sojourners by Timothy Godshall No one argues the certainty of death and taxes. It is the connection between the two that weighs heavily on the consciences of many. In 2003, nearly 42 cents out of every U.S. income tax dollar paid for the military. And this year we will be asked to pay even more for high-tech weaponry while billions of dollars are cut from social programs. The president’s 2005 budget proposal calls for a 7% increase in military spending. By comparison, the increase in domestic, non-homeland security spending is 0.1%. […]
May 10,2004 | CBS News They are safety engineers at nuclear power plants and biological weapons experts. They work at NATO headquarters, at the Pentagon and at nearly every other federal agency. And, as CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, they’re employees with degrees from phony schools.
[ From the article: Sept. 11 imagery provided a backdrop for many troops during the early phases of the war. The Navy Seabees, for example, called their Kuwaiti base “Camp 93” in honor of the passengers who fought hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed in Pennsylvania. One of the units at Abu Ghraib was named after Peter Ganci, a fire chief killed at the World Trade Center. “Soldiers were encouraged to make the incorrect links,” said Jimmy Massey, a former Marine sergeant from Waynesboro, N.C., who served in Iraq, then quit the force and has affiliated with […]
May 4, 2004 | New York Times by ELIZABETH BECKER and TODD BENSON It began with Brazil’s soybean farmers. Pedro de Camargo Neto, then a top official of the Brazilian Rural Society, Brazil’s most influential agriculture lobby, kept hearing complaints in the late 1990’s from farmers that, just as they were starting to turn a profit with their soybean exports, they were getting clobbered by lower-priced American soybeans that were heavily subsidized with taxpayers’ money. “Something was wrong here,” he said in a telephone interview. “I didn’t understand how this could be happening.” After looking closely at the subsidies for […]
May 5, 2004 | New York Times by JULIA MOSKIN BANANAS, always the fashion victims of the produce section, are wearing another new label this spring. Bananas with “Fair Trade Certified” stickers have been available in the United States since October. They represent the new front of an international effort to help first-world consumers improve the living standards of the third-world farmers who grow much of their food. Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate are well established in European markets, and have been available here at premium prices since 1999. They have gained a solid footing in stores like Wild […]
May 12, 2004 | New York Times by SHARON WAXMAN LOS ANGELES, May 11 — Any studio that makes a $125 million movie about global warming is courting controversy. But 20th Century Fox does not seem to have fully anticipated the political firestorm being whipped up by its film “The Day After Tomorrow.” Environmental advocates are using the film’s release, scheduled for May 28, as an opening to slam the Bush administration, whose global warming policies they oppose. Industry groups in Washington are lobbying on Capitol Hill to make sure the film does not help passage of a bill limiting […]
[ “… the Treasury Department, which enforces economic sanctions, is already spending an inordinate amount of time on Cuba… Of the 120 employees at the Office of Foreign Assets Control … 21 are dedicated to enforcing the Cuba embargo and only 4 to tracking the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.” –BL ] Bush Proposes a Plan to Aid Opponents of Castro in Cuba May 7, 2004 | New York Times by CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
[ From one of the articles: “to date, the Bush administration has protected [Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence] Boykin and the dubious methods of which he must have been aware – or even authored – to obtain information.” See this earlier attack on Boykin by enlightened evangelical, Jim Wallis. –BL ] ‘Holy war’ general linked to Iraq prison scandal 12 May 2004 | ABC News Online [Australia] The US Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by US officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas. A Senate hearing […]
[ What worries me is that while the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan insists that Red Cross access to the prisons in Afghanistan provides sufficient safeguard of human rights, the ICRC has a policy of reporting its findings to the U.S. government — not to the public/the media, allowing the government to sit on the reports. –BL ] May 11, 2004 | Reuters by Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) – The U.S. military, under fire for its treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Tuesday turned down a request by Afghanistan’s human rights body for access to Afghans in its custody.
May 12, 2004 | The Guardian by Luke Harding in Baghdad For Huda Shaker, the humiliation began at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad. The American soldiers demanded to search her handbag. When she refused one of the soldiers pointed his gun towards her chest. “He pointed the laser sight directly in the middle of my chest,” said Professor Shaker, a political scientist at Baghdad University. “Then he pointed to his penis. He told me, ‘Come here, bitch, I’m going to fuck you.’” The incident is one of a number in which US soldiers are alleged to have abused, […]
[ See this FT piece and the Washington Post piece below. –BL ] Most Iraqi detainees ‘arrested by mistake’ May 10, 2004 | Financial Times by Frances Williams in Geneva Coalition military intelligence officers believed 70-90 per cent of Iraqi detainees were “arrested by mistake”, according to a leaked Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, further details of which were disclosed on Monday.
[ InformationClearingHouse.info has brought another relevant piece out of the vault … from 2002. –BL ] October 17 2002 | Sydney Morning Herlad Relieved of his command … Brigadier-General Rick Baccus was accused of wanting to allow the [Guantanamo Bay] prisoners too many human rights.
Reflections on American Racist Atrocity Denial, 1776-2004 March 11, 2004 | ZNet by Paul Street The U.S. Marines stood by and did nothing while the library at the Aristide Foundation was burned. With my own eyes I saw the American Marines stand and watch while rebels cut a woman and shot her. I yelled at them, “Do something!” and they swung their guns around toward me and yelled, “Get back!” While I hid in a field the American Marines put their hats on the bodies of dead people and posed for pictures with them. It made me sick because in […]
Military Personnel: Don’t Read This! How a Pentagon email sought to contain the prison abuse scandal May 08, 2004 | Time.com by VIVIENNE WALT / BAGHDAD It’s not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that’s exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba report detailing abuse of detainees at prisons in Iraq that had been posted at the Fox News web site.
Editorial: A failure of leadership at the highest levels 17 May 2004 | ArmyTimes.com Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable. But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons.
[ In Michael Moore’s latest move in the Farenheit 9/11 dispute, he points out that after shooting started “Eisner was furious that Miramax signed this deal with me.” But Disney forked over $6 million for continued production. Among other Disney claims was this: “Fahrenheit 9/11 is not the Disney brand; we put out family oriented films.” So true. That’s why the #1 Disney film in theaters right now is a film called, KILL BILL, VOL. 2. This excellent Miramax film, along with other classics like Pulp Fiction, have all been distributed by Disney. That’s why Miramax exists — to provide […]
[ From the article: “For the first time, according to Dulame’s poll, a majority of Iraqis said they’d feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately.” –BL ] 9 May 2004 | KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS by Hannah Allam
09 May 2004 | Al-Jazeera Hugo Chávez: The US is inciting people to kill Fidel Castro Venezuela’s president has condemned the United States as a “terrorist state” for toughening sanctions against Cuba. Hugo Chávez vowed on Sunday that his government would increase its trade and cooperation with the Communist island. In a television broadcast, the left-wing leader attacked Washington’s measures announced on Thursday which seek to reduce still further the flow of dollars to cash-strapped Cuba. The policy includes an increase in support for internal opponents of President Fidel Castro. “That’s called state terrorism, inciting people to kill President Castro, […]
[ See also this DemocracyNow! segment (5/10/04) on the regular physical and sexual abuse in American prisons with Paul Wright, former MP and prisoner, and editor of Prison Legal News. –BL ] May 8 / 9, 2004 | CounterPunch by ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Torture’s back in the news, courtesy of those lurid pictures of exultant Americans laughing as they torture their Iraqi captives in Abu Ghraib prison run by the US military outside Baghdad. Apparently it takes electrodes and naked bodies piled in a simulated orgy to tickle America’s moral nerve ends. Kids maimed by cluster bombs just […]
[ For a fascinating treatment of torture in and by the U.S., see this piece. Thanks to Popi and Tom Natsoulas for passing these articles along. –BL ] May 7 2004 | The Mirror by JOHN PILGER WHEN I first went to report the American war against Vietnam, in the 1960s, I visited the Saigon offices of the great American newspapers and TV companies, and the international news agencies. I was struck by the similarity of displays on many of their office pinboards. “That’s where we hang our conscience,” said an agency photographer. There were photographs of dismembered bodies, of soldiers […]
[ If the public in the U.S. were to read this Saudi woman’s column with an open mind, untainted by the Administration’s promotion of arrogance, fear, and xenophobia, it would understand that this battle for hearts and minds in the Middle East has been lost, and cannot possibly be won by Bush. She underscores Bush’s blindness, unnoticed by most Americans, which prevents him from seeing the plank in his own eye even as he points out the splinter in his neighbor’s. In Bush’s Al-Hurra interview, he told the Arab world that the US soldiers accused of abusing prisoners were considered […]
[ With the approved $422.2 billion, Bush would spend more on the military than the next 25 countries combined … while reducing funding for programs that address vital human security and environmental needs at home and abroad. Add proposed spending for foreign military aid and training and mandatory spending on military retirement and health care, and the cost would rise to $470 billion. [Friends Committee on National Legislation] Nor does this include the bulk of the Administration’s to-be-requested additional Iraq and Afghanistan war funding, not expected until after the November election (on top of the more than $166 billion already […]
[ The genocide in Sudan continues as the world remains fully preoccupied with the latest disasterous results of Bush foriegn policy. –BL ] May 6, 2004 | News24 [Southern Africa] Nairobi – The Sudanese government is deliberately starving civilians in at least one town in the troubled western Darfur region, according to a UN report obtained on Thursday, which also pointed to a campaign of ethnic cleansing there.
[ This story follows up some earlier ones on Negroponte’s ignoble past. For those in higher education, it is worth mentioning a little-known fact about Negroponte: he is Executive Vice President for Global Markets of The McGraw-Hill Companies. Boycott, anyone? –BL ] Chomsky Blasts Negroponte Appointment to Iraq Embassy May 7th, 2004 | DemocracyNow! On Thursday, the Senate voted 95 to 3 to approve UN ambassador John Negroponte as the head of the new US embassy in Iraq. According to the Los Angeles Times, only one Senator, Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa said that Negroponte’s record as ambassador of Honduras made […]
[ It’s about both oil (see below) and, as I’ve argued elsewhere, free trade. [Venezuela’s] Hydrocarbons Act, passed in November 2001, increased petroleum royalties [for Venezuela] from 16.7 percent to 30 percent and reserved a stake of more than 50 percent for the state in joint ventures. Billion of dollars from these funds are now earmarked for financing agrarian reforms and other social programs. ?All across this oil-rich and poverty-riddled country, the state oil giant…is embarking on a radical and wide-ranging social spending program that includes building homes, running literacy programs and developing agriculture,? reported the New York Times on […]
Sacrificing America’s Children to ‘Make the World a Better Place’ May 4, 2004 | BuzzFlash.com by Maureen Farrell While Colin Powell?s angst over last February?s reputation-tainting U.N. presentation has been colorfully documented ("This is bullshit!," he said at one point), the May issue of Vanity Fair is teeming with information that even ardent Bush administration apologists would be hard pressed to defend. And while it’s no surprise that Dick Cheney strong-armed others into backing the war in Iraq, his ruthless eagerness to deceive is, in itself, a revelation. If tall tales about mobile labs, WMD stockpiles and Iraq’s ties to […]
Transcript of remarks by George W. Bush, thanks to InformationClearingHouse.info. 07/19/2002 | White House THE PRESIDENT: As we prepare our military for action, we will protect our military from international courts and committees with agendas of their own. AUDIENCE: Hooah. THE PRESIDENT: You might have heard about a treaty that would place American troops under the jurisdiction of something called the International Criminal Court. The United States cooperates with many other nations to keep the peace, but we will not submit American troops to prosecutors and judges whose jurisdiction we do not accept. AUDIENCE: Hooah. (Applause.) THE PRESIDENT: Our nation […]
[ Senate Intelligence Committee member Diane Feinstein said she has learned of worse revelations than the widely circulated Abu Ghraib photos. Rumsfeld has confirmed this. Below is an unconfirmed report by an al-Jazeera journalist who claims to have been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib which might be a glance at things to come. He says he witnessed abuse of a 12 year-old girl — I presume in order to coerce her brother, a prisoner in the cell block, to reveal information. "She was naked and screaming and calling out to him as they beat her. Her brother was helpless and could […]
April 30, 2004 | Reason.com by Jacob Sullum During their opening statement in Sami Al-Hussayen’s trial at the federal courthouse in Boise, Idaho, prosecutors put a new spin on the slippery concept of “links to terrorism.” The Idaho Statesman reports that they “displayed a chart” showing how a Web site that Al-Hussayen had helped maintain “could eventually access 20 other sites with ties to radical organizations.”
[ To follow-up an earlier story, why won’t Disney distribute Michael Moore’s film, Farenheit 911? FAIR speculates that "Disney’s financial involvement with a member of the same Saudi family whose connections to the Bush dynasty are investigated by Moore" might be the most relevant factor yet. From FAIR’s activist alert: Prince Al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire investor who is a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, became a major investor in Disney’s Eurodisney theme park when it was in financial trouble, and may be asked to bail out the troubled project again. It’s not unprecedented for Disney to respond favorably […]
[ This must-read by Stan Goff profoundly puts the Abu Ghraib revelations in context. Goff avoids the tendency of those who focus exclusively on the (legitimate) hunt for the specific evil doers, and who thereby miss the institutional causes of evil. He explores the systemic causes of abuse underlying the events at Abu Ghraib, My Lai, and elsewhere, and analyzes the ramifications of the publicity as violations of the "Powell Doctrine" (“which includes a co-opted press and a vigorous attempt to keep things like flag-draped coffins off of those wide screen TVs”). From the piece: Their very humanity – that […]
IRAQ: Victory Rises Above a Mass Grave May 3, 2004 | Inter Press Service by Aaron Glantz A team of local volunteers wearing surgical masks lifts the rotting body of a middle-aged woman from a shallow grave in the front yard of a house. The house owner says the body lay there three weeks. FALLUJAH – A U.S. aircraft bombed her car as she fled the city with her husband. The husband was buried in the garden of the house next door. The destroyed remains of the car are scattered a few metres away. ?We couldn’t give her a proper […]
Rape Rooms: A Chronology What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded. Wednesday, May 5, 2004 | Slate (Listen to this story on NPR’s Day to Day) by William Saletan “The Iraqi people are now free. And they do not have to worry about the secret police coming after them in the middle of the night, and they don’t have to worry about their husbands and brothers being taken off and shot, or their wives being taken to rape rooms. Those days are over.” — Paul Bremer, Administrator, [Iraq] Coalition Provisional Authority, Sept. 2, 2003 “Iraq is free of […]
July 1, 2003 | Reuters WASHINGTON – The United States on Tuesday suspended military assistance to nearly 50 countries, including Colombia and six nations seeking NATO membership, because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution. As the deadline passed for governments to sign exemption agreements or face the suspension of military aid, President Bush issued waivers for 22 countries. But the 22 countries did not include Colombia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Colombia, where the government is fighting leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers, has been one of the largest recipients […]
Questioning the New Imperial World Order: A Hearing on the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) [ Below are my excerpts from the Commission’s fascinating website. You can see the list participants on the site; you can listen to audio testimony at the Commission’s audio gallery. –BL ] The BRussells Tribunal is a hearing committee composed of academics, intellectuals and artists in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal, set up in 1967 to investigate war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. The hearing is scheduled for 14-17th April 2004 at The Beursschouwburg and Les Halles in Brussels. It will […]
by Brendan Lalor If you did not see the footage of U.S. troops killing wounded Iraqis in December of 2003, you are not alone. According to the Independent’s Robert Fisk, it was "blacked out" in the U.S. with the exception of an airing by ABC. InformationClearingHouse.info is making a 6-minute clip from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (from May 4, 2004) available on its website. The pattern of violations of international law is symptomatic of a dehumanizing militarism in the U.S.; and this latest addition will, in turn, fuel more hatred against the U.S.
[ Martin’s article is not just an indictment of the Bush Administration’s plan to “use Rumsfeld as a political lightning rod, and thus protect the Bush White House,” nor merely of Kerry’s cowering on Iraq; it’s an indictment of the U.S.’s two-party, “duopolistic” system, which excludes “tens of millions of American working people [who] oppose the occupation of Iraq … from the official debate in the 2004 election.” –BL ] 7 May 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by Patrick Martin The American media and Washington political circles have suddenly begun a discussion of whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld […]
May 06, 2004 | ZMag.org by Mark Harris “What’s incredible was the guy who was president then was Richard Nixon, which shows that when you build a big movement from down below, regardless of who’s in the White House, you can bring about change." — Tony Mazzochi, former legislative director of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, on passage of the first Occupational and Safety Health Act in 1970. (New York Times, Aug. 24, 2002) Some of the more enthusiastic moments at the March 20 antiwar rallies around the country occurred when speakers raised the specter of President Bush […]
May 6, 2004 | Alternet.org by Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com Last year in this space, I took the occasion of an upcoming Mother’s Day weekend to reprint the 1870 call by American poet and women’s leader Julia Ward Howe for the establishment of the holiday. The response was astonishing; the awareness was nearly nil — even by peace activists — that what is now widely viewed as a sentimental tribute to family was originally a call for women to wage a general strike to end war.
May 4, 2004 | Save the Children [ “[A] mother in the bottom ten countries is 26 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life and 750 times more likely to die herself in pregnancy or childbirth than a mother in the top ten countries.” ] May 4, 2004 | Save the Children Westport, CT (May 4, 2004) — Save the Children, a U.S.-based independent global humanitarian organization, released today its State of the World’s Mothers 2004 report that identifies the best — and worst — countries to be a mother. The report’s fifth […]
The Oil Crunch May 7, 2004 | New York Times by PAUL KRUGMAN Before the start of the Iraq war his media empire did so much to promote, Rupert Murdoch explained the payoff: “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil.” Crude oil prices in New York rose to almost $40 a barrel yesterday, a 13-year high. Those who expected big economic benefits from the war were, of course, utterly wrong about how things would go in Iraq. But the disastrous occupation […]
[ For background on U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, see this earlier story. –BL ] Limbaugh on torture of Iraqis: U.S. guards were "having a good time," "blow[ing] some steam off" May 5, 2004 | MediaMatters.org by A.S. & G.W. Hours before President George W. Bush announced plans to address the Arab world to condemn the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, Rush Limbaugh justified the U.S. guards’ mistreatment of the Iraqis, stating that they were just "having a good time," and that their actions served as an "emotional release." As […]
[ The buzz about the Sundance-award winning Canadian film, The Corporation, is pretty exciting. –BL ] May 6, 2004 | Chronicle of Higher Education (an excerpt) The Corporation (which opens June 4) is a sprawling screed with a jumpy visual style that grows irksome. At 145 minutes, this Canadian production is about 20 minutes shorter than the original director’s cut, but still seems overlong. Nevertheless, its argument for corporate responsibility and environmental sustainability has struck a chord with film-festival audiences, who have showered it with awards. The film, by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan, begins with a quick, clever […]
[ From the article: The main goal of the meeting was to find ways of dealing with US occupation without resorting to violence, members of the human rights group say… A few months earlier, hawkish US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had visited the offices of the human rights organization to praise its efforts. –BL ] US forces take a cue from Saddam May 4, 2004 | The Inter Press News Service by Aaron Glantz NAJAF: Dozens of followers of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr sing rhymes of martyrdom as they carry the coffins of two of their slain comrades into […]
May 5, 2004 | New York Times by JIM RUTENBERG WASHINGTON, May 4 — The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday. The film, “Fahrenheit 911,” links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush’s actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
[ This is a nice re-cap of the story about how the U.S. aided in the creation of al Qaeda. –BL ] May 4, 2004 | AlterNet.org by David Morris Who is behind global Islamic terrorism? A new book by Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, makes a persuasive case that the guilty party is the United States. For Mamdani, director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, the seeds of 2004 were planted in 1979. To be more precise, in July 1979, when Jimmy Carter, smarting from US setbacks in Vietnam, Iran and Nicaragua, decided to fight […]
[ From the article: Bush was so free of doubt about going to war that he didn’t even ask most of his top advisers what they thought…. Bush explained that he already knew that Vice President Dick Cheney was gung-ho, and he … ‘could tell what [Powell and Rumsfeld] thought’…. Bush displayed no second thoughts about Iraq’s postwar miseries or the failure to turn up any WMD. “I haven’t suffered doubt,” he told Woodward. –BL ] April 26, 2004 | Newsweek by David Hume Kennerly
[ According to the Los Angeles Times, one recent strategy suggested by the Defense Science Board (under the direction of Donald Rumsfeld) is to create a “super-Intelligence Support Activity” organization whose “covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception” would allow it to launch secret operations aimed at “stimulating reactions” among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction — that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to “quick-response” attacks by U.S. forces. While I am not predicting that this body will, under Rumsfeld’s direction, orchestrate a terrorist attack in the U.S., followed by […]
[ It’s as if the U.S. has long had a motive to prevent prison inspections. This piece has resurfaced thanks to InformationClearingHouse.info. –BL ] US finds strange bedfellows in UN vote on torture April 19, 2002 | Christian Science Monitor A proposal including prison inspections is set for a vote today, but Washington says it conflicts with US law. by Peter Ford PARIS – The United States has aligned itself with some of its fiercest and least democratic enemies in opposing efforts to strengthen an international treaty that outlaws torture, according to diplomatic sources. Washington has found itself on the same […]
[ From DemocracyNow! (4/3/04): Gov’t Proposes Extending Draft to Women. Hearst newspapers has obtained government documents that show the chief of the Selective Service System has proposed registering women for the military draft, expanding the draft age from 25 to 35, as well as requiring that young Americans regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche specialties needed in the armed services. The proposal was made by the agency’s acting director Lewis Brodsky prior to the invasion of Iraq. The paper obtained the previously secret proposal through the Freedom of Information Act. –BL ] May 2, 2004 | […]
[ From the article: [Dr.] Abdul-Latif al-Mayah, a middle-aged political science professor … spoke in favor of holding elections in Iraq by June 30, the date set for America’s planned handover of political power to Iraqis. Less than 24 hours later, he was gunned down on his way to the university. –BL ] Death to those who dare to speak out April 30, 2004 | Christian Science Monitor by Annia Ciezadlo BAGHDAD – Even under Saddam Hussein, Saad Jawad spoke his mind. The mild-mannered, political science professor was one of only four people who dared to sign a petition asking Iraq’s […]
[ According to DemocracyNow! this letter of dissent from former diplomats to Bush has been ignored by most of the press with the exception of the British-run Financial Times. –BL ] April 30, 2004 | available at miftah.org President George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW Washington, DC Dear Mr. President: We former U.S. diplomats applaud our 52 British colleagues who recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair criticizing his Middle East policy and calling on Britain to exert more influence over the United States. As retired foreign service officers we care deeply about our […]
27 avril 2004 | Associated Press GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The Caribbean has indefinitely postponed a meeting of its national security ministers with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge because of major differences over Haiti, officials said Tuesday. Caribbean Community Secretary General Edwin Carrington said the May 3-4 meeting in the Bahamas won’t take place because the 15-member regional bloc does not recognize the new U.S.-backed Haitian interim government.
[ Volunteer Cuban doctors have been providing health care in Venezuela since March 2003 to the chagrin of the anti-Chavez Venezuelan business class. Cuba’s health-care system “offers medical care as a universal right that is free of charge, eliminating medical practice as a business.” Volunteer Cuban doctors, most of whom have carried out internationalist volunteer missions in other countries … receive a stipend of $250 a month to cover living expenses. They live in workers’ homes in the areas where they serve, operating clinics out of community centers and other facilities. They provide much of the medicine, which is donated […]
3 May 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by James Conachy Operating behind a veil of state and corporate secrecy, dozens of private security firms with intimate connections to the American political establishment are playing a crucial role in the US occupation of Iraq. The wholesale contracting of military work to these companies is one of the most outrageous forms of war profiteering taking place under the auspices of the Bush administration. Modern-day mercenaries are amassing vast fortunes assisting the US ruling elite to establish a puppet regime in Iraq, repress the Iraqi people and plunder the country’s resources. Security […]
May 3, 2004 | New York Times by WILLIAM J. BROAD The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals. Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America’s, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation’s intellectual and cultural life.
3rd May 2004 | The New Statesman by Terry Eagleton, Reviewer Under review: The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O Paxton Allen Lane (the Penguin Press, 336pp, ISBN 0713997206) Nobody knows on which day of the week the Renaissance started, or in what month the Dark Ages came to a halt. The origins of fascism, however, are surprisingly well documented. As Robert Paxton informs us in this lucid, engagingly readable study, the movement began on Sunday morning, 23 March 1919, at a meeting called by Benito Mussolini’s supporters in Milan “to declare war against socialism”. That, at least, was when […]