31 July, 2007
Humanitarian
Disaster In Iraq
By Jerry White
Eight million Iraqis—or one third of the
country’s population—urgently require water, sanitation,
food and shelter, according to a new report issued by the British-based
relief organization Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee of Iraq,
a network of nearly 300 international and Iraq-based non-governmental
organizations
Iraqi Team Wins
Asian Cup,
Captain Condemns US Occupation
By Patrick Martin
The 1-0 victory by the Iraqi soccer team in Sunday’s
Asian Cup featured a brilliant goal on a header by Younis Mahmoud, the
team’s 24-year-old captain. This was followed by an “own
goal” for the Bush administration and its Iraqi stooge regime,
which had hoped to reap a propaganda windfall from the event. Instead,
Mahmoud told a worldwide television audience that he dared not return
to his homeland because of the conditions created by the US occupation.
“I want America to go out,” he said. “Today, tomorrow,
or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn’t
invade Iraq and hopefully it will be over soon.”
The March To
The Edge Of The Cliff
By Siv O'Neall
Mankind is blindly marching straight towards the
edge of the cliff. Our so-called leaders are busy filling their pockets
with gold and making sure they are first in line, that they can yell
louder and grab faster than all the rest of us and that they can reach
farther into whatever we're heading for. The fact that it's a morass
and that it's going to suck us all up, nobody seems to care about
Converging Interests
In Iraq Allow Bush
An ‘Iranian Option’ -Arabs Threatened
By Nicola Nasser
Converging U.S. – Iran interests in Iraq
are creating a common ground for an “Iranian option” for
President George W. Bush that could be developed into an historical
foreign policy breakthrough of the kind he has been yearning for in
the Arab – Israeli conflict
"Tamil
Liberation And Prabhakaran Are Far Apart "
By Nilantha Ilangamuwa & Satchi Sithanandan
Prominent writer on Sri Lankan issues and editor
of the Subidcham and independendentsl.com websites published from Germany
and USA Satchi Sithananthan spoke to us freely about the current situation
in Sri Lanka and the Tamil Diaspora and also made pointed references
to certain historical realities in the country to which our politicians
had turned a blind eye thus causing deadly consequences
The Strange Cases
Of Mohammed Haneef
And Iftikhar Gilani
By Jawed Naqvi
I spoke to Iftikhar Gilani about the Haneef episode
and asked him to compare that example with his own incarceration that
lasted seven scorching months in Delhi's notorious Tihar Jail. In India
a terror suspect is often held for six months without charge. And this
is precisely what happened with Iftikhar Gilani. He lived through hell
for seven months and was then as mysteriously freed
Environment,
Sustainable Development
And Globalisation: A Plea To Indian Legislatures
By Dr.Zafar Mahfooz Nomani
The India today needs to usher in a season of transformation,
a season of stewardship to make long overdue constitutional commitment
to protection and improvement of environment and security of future
generation
Song Of The
Sleepless River
By Prasanna Ratnayake
In the past two months Hugh Masekela and Afroreggae
have given sold-out concerts in the Barbican. But this note is not about
jazz or reggae; it traces some reverberations and reflections these
events evoked
The Intra-National
Colonization Of Patriotisms
By Jorge Majfud
It is assumed that there exists a unique –
true, honorable – form for the nation and of being Uruguayan (Chinese,
Argentine, North American, French). If one is against that particular
idea of country, of fatherland (patria), then one is anti-patriotic,
one is a traitor
30 July, 2007
Hurricane
Boost 'Due To Warm Sea'
By Matt McGrath
A new analysis of Atlantic hurricanes says their
numbers have doubled over the last century. The study says that warmer
sea surface temperatures and changes in wind patterns caused by climate
change are fuelling much of the increase
Running Out
Fossil Fuels: A Cause For Glee?
By Emily Spence
John James, one of the writers for Crisis Coalition,
suggests, "It may be that declining oil may save us from climate
change. 1.5 degrees is inevitable, and in another four years -- two
degrees. Were oil to decline in that time span, we may yet survive
Football Succeeds
Where Politics Fails
By Ali al-Fadhily
An Iraqi football victory seems to have united
Iraqis across the country where politicians only divide it
Something Happened
On 9-11
By Sheila Samples
Something happened on 9-11 -- something so horrible
that the American people acquiesced for a time in their own subjection.They
will not succumb to their own destruction. Enough is enough
Impeachment
As Political Solution To Iraq War
By James Rothenberg
A just solution to Iraq invasion won’t come
without a cleansing and we are fortunate to have one handy. Impeachment
will tell a story about how and why we started an aggression. It will
contain sub-plots about indefinite detention and torture and the means
of repression here at home, including the suppression of dissent
Americans Stuck
In Political Stupor
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
Americans must awake from their political stupor
and stop letting themselves be victimized and manipulated by the media/political/financial
elites running and ruining our nation
Reparations
By David Swanson
On the question of impeaching Vice President Dick
Cheney, however, Conyers takes a very different tack. He has published
a book documenting the crimes of Cheney and Bush, but when it comes
to supporting a bill, Conyers offers the "we don't have the votes"
excuse
Ecuador: Clash
Of Old And New
By Federico Fuentes
Denouncing the congress as “rubbish”
and a “national disgrace”, left-wing Ecuadorian President
Rafael Correa called on the upcoming constituent assembly, for which
there will be elections held on September 30, to dissolve the body,
which is widely viewed as corrupt. The calls came after the opposition-controlled
congress amended a number of recent laws introduced by the executive
to curb unprecedented rises in the price of food
Simmer Discontent
By Syed Ali Safvi
It's a travesty of justice that Kashmir do not
have a single building, road, hospital or any other public infrastructure
named after any of our freedom fighters who laid down their lives only
that we could breathe in the ambience of freedom, peace and tranquility;
where we would not be forced to pay tax to live on our own soil. Instead
of commemorating them, we have roads, colleges, public parks named after
the Dogra rulers who had been cruel and savage.In their rule, Kashmiris
simmered in the smoldering fire
'Use Of ORS'
In Diarrhoea Needs A Push
By Anil Gulati
Thousands of children die due to dehydration in
diarrhoea in Madhya Pradesh and may be millions in India. Bhopal recently
lost four lives due to cholera. Oral Rehydration salt solution can save
many like Sharda. Every year on July 29 we observe ORS Day with aim
to promote the use of Oral Rehydration salt and to educate the people
about its use
28 July, 2007
Bush
Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream
By David Swanson
The current President Bush has accomplished much
more smoothly than his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was
one of the goals of Prescott's gang, namely the elimination of Congress
Martial Law
Threat Is Real
By Dave Lindorff
The looming collapse of the US military in Iraq,
of which a number of generals and former generals, including former
Chief of Staff Colin Powell, have warned, is happening none too soon,
as it my be the best hope for preventing military rule here at home
Papers Of
Impeachment: A Citizens' Action
By Lucinda Marshall
Get a blank piece of paper and in big capitol letters
that fill the page, write the following one word: IMPEACH
Fax that word to Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers and your Senators and
Representatives. If enough papers of impeachment as it were pile up,
we will literally put that word right back on the table where it belongs
in such force that it cannot be ignored. And then maybe, before it is
too late, we will be able to begin to reclaim our country
I Will Not Hesitate
To Use Force:Obama
By Andre Damon
If the 2008 elections put Barack Obama in the White
House, the American people will be saddled with a new president who
continues the war in Iraq and whose foreign policy does not significantly
differ from that of his reviled predecessor
Weighing The
Benefits And The Deficits Of Advancements
By Emily Spence
As an acquaintance recently wrote, "The Earth
[is] spinning inexorably without caring who inhabits her. We need a
new species of individuals, without religion, hatred or borders if this
is possible. In the meantime, enjoy yourself. It's later than you think."
Bush's
Real Agenda In Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud
The Hamas government crackdown on Mohamed Dahlan's
corrupt security forces and affiliated gangs in the Gaza Strip in June
appears to mark a turning point in the Bush administration's foreign
policy regarding Palestine and Israel. The supposed shift, however,
is nothing but a continuation of Washington's efforts to stifle Palestinian
democracy, to widen the chasm separating Hamas and Fatah, and to ensure
the success of the Israeli project, which is focussed on colonising
and annexing what remains of Palestinian land
Of Marx, Christ,
And The Persecution Of Radicals:
How Will Humanity Survive The Capitalist Threat?
By Jason Miller
Forget worrying about the “communist threat.”
We need to turn the moneyed establishment’s idiocy on its head
and focus our energies on answering a question that affects the 90%
of us who aren’t obscenely affluent:How will humanity survive
the capitalist threat?
The Terrible
Innocence Of Art
By Jorge Majfud
Freedom, perhaps, may be the main differential
characteristic of art. And when this freedom does not turn its face
away from the tragic reality of its people, then the characteristic
turns into moral consciousness. Aesthetics is reconciled with ethics.
Indifference is never neutral; only ignorance is neutral, but it proves
to be an ethical and practical problem to promote ignorance in the name
of some virtue
Vision India:
Together We Can!
By Nishikant Waghmare
As Indians we must have one motto: "One People!
One Nation ! One India!" Now, let us look back at the Indian society.
In villages where 81% of Indians live untouchability is practiced. Do
untouchables get drinking water? Do they socialize like others? Have
their Human Rights violations- rapes, beatings, and cold blooded murders
stopped? Will they get justice in their lifetime?
Children First
: Village Planning In
The Guna Villages Of Madhya Pradesh
By Anil Gulati
Villages in Guna district in the state of Madhya
Pradesh are experiencing a positive change which will go a long way
to give district's children a right start and bring improvement in the
lives of women of the district
26 July, 2007
Is
The US Preparing To Attack Pakistan?
By Eric Margolis
The Bush Administration may be preparing to lash
out at old ally Pakistan, which Washington now blames for its humiliating
failures to crush al-Qaida, capture its elusive leaders, or defeat Taliban
resistance forces in Afghanistan
Yesterday Iftiqar
Gilani,Today Binayak Sen
By Subhash Gatade
One just wishes that much like their Australian
counterpart, the civil society in this part of the globe also wakes
up to the innocence of Dr Binayak Sen and tell the powers that be that
'We want him out' ! If the Australians can fight for the human rights
of an Indian, should the Indians maintain a conspiracy of silence when
one of their own is being brutalised by the state
Tales Of
Angst, Alienation And Martial Law
By Phil Rockstroh
Those who have been paying attention are aware
that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder
knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial
power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In
addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment
camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those
who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American
empire's version of the Reichstag fire
Getting Impeachment
Wrong
By David Swanson
Joel Wendland has written an article opposing impeachment.
His claims, and all claims of impeachment opponents, have long since
been answered here. But here's some redundancy
Lebanon's Bloody
Summer
By Mohamad Bazzi
Until the Lebanese can agree on a stronger and
more egalitarian way to share authority, they will be cursed with instability,
their future dictated by foreign powers
Thoughts On
Virginia Tech And Racism
By Jeanette M. Pollard
There are task forces and committees that have
and will study what happened and how it could have been prevented. I
wonder if any of these task forces or committees will look at racism
and how it reared its head in this tragedy
Baquba Denied The
Healing Touch
By Ahmed Ali
Diyala General Hospital in the provincial capital
Baquba has been hit by severe lack of supplies amid ongoing attacks
by militants. The shortages coupled with a lack of basic infrastructure
have left the largest hospital in Diyala province short of supplies,
and staffed by terrorised doctors often unable to do their job
Reviewing Michael
Parenti's "Democracy For The Few"
By Stephen Lendman
Parenti's latest book, and subject of this review,
is the newly updated eight edition of one of his most noted and popular
earlier ones - Democracy For the Few. In it, he shows how democracy
in the nation really works. It dispels the fiction Americans are practically
weaned on from birth, taught in school to the highest levels, and get
daily from the dominant media
God Has A
Plan
By David Truskoff
Religionists are appalled at the corruption that
gives developers the right to turn the so-called Holy Land into Long
Island. The pollution of the rivers, the clogged and dangerous roads
and the ever present swingers with their gambling casinos and legal
houses of prostitution makes the religionist warn, History will show
Israel died an early death by its own hand
Millennium
Development Goals:Half Way Through,
A Need To Ensure Greater Commitment And Accountability
By Umakant
It is high time that a greater involvement of civil
society organizations is encouraged in the task of making a prosperous
and an equitable socio, economic and political order in Asia. High GDP
growth rate does not necessarily reflect equitable distribution of resources
and the fruits of growth. That is why an equitable development paradigm
should be given top priority while addressing MDGs and other needs for
lessening the growing inequality
25 July, 2007
Iraqis
Blame DU For Surge In Cancer
By RIA Novosti
Iraq’s environment minister blamed Monday
the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation
Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country.
As a result of “at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated
during bombing” with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman
said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000
to 8,000 new ones registered each year
International
Investments:
Is Policy Pendulum Swinging Back?
By Kavaljit Singh
Despite the dominant trend towards greater liberalization
of investment flows, nowadays certain kinds of investments have come
under closer scrutiny by policy makers. In several countries (both developed
and developing), there are moves to tighten existing investment rules
or to enact new rules to regulate foreign investments and protect “strategic
sectors” from foreign investors
Zahir Shah: The
Last King Of Afghanistan
By Robert Fisk
He was King of a nation that, in the the minds
of many, does not really exist. He was a feudal master who believed
in liberating women. He was a figurehead who lived a life of luxury
in exile while his people suffered the agonies of war and occupation.
The story of Zahir Shah is the story of Western arrogance and Eastern
impotence
The
Ivory Tower Behind The Apartheid Wall
By Margaret Aziza Pappano
In the last few weeks, university presidents across
the US and Canada have rushed to issue statements about the proposed
boycott of Israeli academic institutions by the British University and
College Union
The Invisible
Government
By John Pilger
In a speech in Chicago, John Pilger describes how
propaganda has become such a potent force in our lives and, in the words
of one of its founders, represents 'an invisible government'
Australian Government
Launches Unprecedented Attacks On Lawyers As Haneef Case Falls Apart
By Mike Head
With its prosecution of Indian Muslim doctor Mohamed
Haneef on a terrorism charge in disarray, the Howard government has
responded by launching unprecedented attacks on his lawyers, and the
legal profession at large, accusing them of waging a campaign to undermine
the anti-terrorism laws
Support Our Robots
By Adam Engel
Well, I suppose we won't have to worry as much
about the safety of our invading, marauding army. We can “support
our Robots” instead, as unmanned planes, named, appropriately,
The Reaper, murders Iraqis, destroys more homes and “secret insurgent
hideouts” ( among their families, friends and other non-combatants,
in Iraq), and secures the area for Truth, Justice, and the American
Way (massive oil consumption, militarism, predatory Corporatism, racism
and all the rest)
Senator Reid
Has No Idea
By Kevin Zeese
Senator Reid Has No Idea How Many Troops Would
Remain if Democrats Iraq “Exit” Amendment Became Law
Hungry World
Of Dalits In Poorvanchal
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Four districts of Poorvanchal (Eastern Uttar-Pradesh)
namely Maharajganj, Kushingar, Deoria and Gorakhpur witness the dance
of death every year. Two of these district Kushinagar and Gorakhpur
were selected for the NREGA programme while Maharajganj has also been
selected for the same from this year. All these districts saw a large
number of deaths due to hunger and malnutrition despite all these programmes
24 July, 2007
England
Under Water: Scientists
Confirm Global Warming Link
By Michael McCarthy
It's official: the heavier rainfall in Britain
is being caused by climate change, a major new scientific study will
reveal this week, as the country reels from summer downpours of unprecedented
ferocity
Why Buying
Less Is More Than Buying Green
By George Monbiot
It wasn’t meant to happen like this. The
climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and
our summers drier. So I can’t claim that these floods were caused
by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like
the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible
winter world we’ll inhabit if we don’t sort ourselves out
Electing
Gore - Non-Linear Climate Change Politics
By Bill Henderson
A Gore run for president will only happen and be
successful when this true appreciation of danger from climate change
pushes far ahead of more immediate economic and security electoral concerns.
And, in all probability, this more accurate appreciation of the climate
change danger won't happen in time for 08 so Mr. Gore is probably not
electable as climate change president and is probably more effective
still as an outsider
Mobilising
‘World Opinion’
By Adam W Parsons
As individuals we may feel separated, impotent
and unimportant, but as part of a transnational movement with a selective
petition of demands – based on the simple, human principles of
cooperation, sharing and justice – we may find ourselves in a
position to definitely shape world affairs. The prospective rapidity
of worldwide changes could reasonably prove, if the Two-Thirds majority
world realise the power of joining hands, beyond the erstwhile dreams
of even the late Mahatma and Luther King
Saving A President
By Stephen Lendman
For now, though, removing the criminal class from
Washington, restoring the rule of law, saving the republic, avoiding
further wars, and ending the current ones is job one. Failure to do
it may mean whatever's ahead won't matter. It'll be too late long before
it arrives. Those who care about these things and see the threat better
enlist others, do more than complain about it, and act in time collectively
to stop it. It can only come from the bottom up, never the other way
Bush’
Failure
By William James Martin
Bush seems to have failed in all of his intended
objectives, not least of which is freeing Americans from the threat
of Al Qaeda. Far from defeating Al Qaeda, Bush has only strengthened
it, while paying the price of hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis and
Americans and three quarters of a trillion dollars transferred from
the pockets of American taxpayers to the banks of east Asia, which is
the location of US borrowing in order to pay for the war
The
Course Of History
By Dan Lieberman
A return to the natural course of history might
resolve the Middle East Crisis
Living Becomes
Hard In A Dead City
By Ahmed Ali
Life in the violence-plagued capital city of Iraq's
Diyala province has become a struggle for day-to-day survival.Heavy
U.S military operations, sectarian death squads and al-Qaeda militants
have combined to make normal life in Baquba, 50 km northeast of Baghdad,
all but impossible
Targeting
Symptom: Ignoring Disease
By Ram Puniyani
The terror attack in Glasgow (July 06, 07) has
once again, brought to the fore the debate about the nature, the problem
of terrorism and how to deal with it
22 July, 2007
Oil
And Gas May Run Short By 2015
By Geoffrey Lean
Humanity is approaching an unprecedented crisis
when not enough oil and gas will be produced to keep industrial civilisation
running, the world's top oilmen warned last week. The warning –
which is being hailed as a "tipping point" – marks the
first time that the industry has accepted that it may soon no longer
be able to meet demand for its products
Rising From
The Phoenix's Flames
By Emily Spence
With the many diverse, monumental and urgent calamities
facing the world today, the need for massive sweeping change on the
part of humankind is undeniably clear. Without further delay, it's imperative
that the necessary adjustments start here and now!
Justice, The
Australian Way
By Ghali Hassan
There is no conclusive evidence to justify Dr Haneef’
detention. His continued detention is the greatest injustice, and undermines
his right to the presumption of innocence. This form of injustice is
only adding to Australia’s already tarnish reputation as an anti-Muslims
penal colony
White Australia
Grossly Abusing
Indigenous And Asian Children
By Gideon Polya
The right-wing, Bush-ite Australian Federal Government
has attempted to shore up its flagging supporting an election year by
“invading” Northern Territory Aboriginal (Indigenous) communities
with troops in battle dress – ostensibly to deal with “Aboriginal
Child Abuse”. This is widely seen as a cynical and racist “land
grab” and an exercise in bolstering the racist vote in White Australia
Bush Administration
Threatens
Military Intervention In Pakistan
By Peter Symonds
The Bush administration this week signalled a tough
new stance on Pakistan, demanding that military strongman General Pervez
Musharraf takes action against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in areas
bordering Afghanistan, and threatening US strikes if he failed to do
so
Stealing America
By David Truskoff
Where do you think Clinton came up with the quick
30 Million and Obama, out of no where, acquired 33 million. Both of
them have been openly courting Pro Israel money. Most large donors,
of course, want something back for their money. The prediction for the
2008 presidential race is that the candidates will spend a Billion and
the one who spends the most almost always wins. It is stealing America
Trying
To Destroy Hamas Is Bad Policy
By Ira Glunts
The Israeli and US policy of supporting the newly
formed Palestinian government of the weak Mahmoud Abbas and his divided
Fatah party while attempting to isolate and paralyze the democratically
elected Hamas government, could prove to be as great a blunder as the
debathification of Iraq
Bush’s
War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing
By Ramzy Baroud
The news of recent weeks emanating from Washington
and Baghdad point to one clear, if not final, conclusion: The Bush administration's
adventures in Iraq have been a complete failure
Gujarat:
Encounters Of A Different Kind
By Raju Rajagopal
As far as the Muslims are concerned, the state
has not only failed to heal the wounds of 2002, but it seems to have
largely succeeded in invisibilizing the community. Thankfully, there
are still a handful of activists here who refuse to throw in the towel
in their David and Goliath encounters with institutionalized intolerance.
This is their story
19 July, 2007
Another
Step Toward War With Iran
By Joshua Frank
The Democrats certainly don’t contest Bush’s
Middle East foreign policy, they embrace it. Just last week the Senate
voted 97-0 in favor of moving toward war with Iran. So while the Democrats
call for withdraw of our troops from Iraq in the future, they insist
we must keep an eye on Iran, for the Iranians are opposing the occupation
of Iraq by allegedly arming the Shia resistance
Carnage In Kirkuk
Amid Conflicts Over City’s Future
By James Cogan
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-filled
truck on Monday in the busy political and commercial district of the
oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk, just as hundreds of people were going
for their lunch-break. The carnage was horrendous. At least 85 people
were killed and more than 180 wounded. The victims were predominantly
ethnic Kurds. Given the crisis-stricken state of the country’s
health system, many of the injured are unlikely to survive
Overcoming
The Conspiracy Against Palestine
By Ali Abunimah
"Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days
are numbered, but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And
be sure as well that ... the promises I made in front of President Bush,
I will give my life to keep." Those words were written by the Fatah
warlord Mohammed Dahlan, whose US- and Israeli-backed forces were routed
by Hamas in the Gaza Strip last month, in a 13 July 2003 letter to then
Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz and published on Hamas' website
on 4 July this year
Interview With
Jonathan Cook
By Amir Tajik
Interview with the British journalist Jonathan
Cook who is based in Nazareth, Israel
The Militarization
And Annexation Of North America
By Stephen Lendman
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North
America (SPP) was formerly launched at a March 23, 2005 meeting in Waco,
Texas attended by George Bush, Mexico's President Vincente Fox and Canadian
Prime Minister Paul Martin. It's a tri-national agreement hatched below
the radar in Washington containing the recommendations of the Independent
Task Force of North America
The Great
American Train Wreck
By Rand Clifford
In this age of continuous and absolute lies, one
thing Americans can rely on: If the government cries wolf, the sheep
are relatively safe
No Evidence
Of Iran’s Role In Violence And
Instability In Iraq – Confirms British Foreign Minister
By Mehrnaz Shahabi
David Milliband, British foreign secretary, confirmed
in an interview with the Financial times, 8th July, that there is no
evidence of Iranian complicity in instability in Iraq or attacks on
British troops
Sri Lanka's
War Goes North
By Amantha Perera
With the Sri Lankan government celebrating the
capture of the country's east, all-out battles with Tamil rebels in
their northern bastion of Jaffna are imminent
Operation Silence
Backfires
By Gul Jammas Hussain
On Tuesday the bombers struck at Islamabad leaving
16 dead while injuring more than 40 people. On Sunday, in a devastating
series of suicide attacks in different cities of northwest Pakistan
at least 52 people died and more than 100 were injured. Clearly, Operation
Silence has backfired, since the extremists have not been silenced
18 July, 2007
A
Tale Of Two Genocides,
Congo And Darfur
By Glen Ford
As many as five million people have died in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. A quarter million or so have perished
in Darfur, western Sudan. But only Darfur rates coverage in the U.S.
corporate media, action by the United States on the diplomatic and military
front, or concerted interest by the Congressional Black Caucus. The
Congolese genocide, triggered directly by the U.S. and its surrogates,
is masked in silence. In Darfur, "Arabs" who are indistinguishable
from their Black African Muslim neighbors are demonized as enemies in
the "clash of civilizations."
Reports Show
Impact Of Climate Change In Africa
By Barry Mason
A recent news item on Britain’s Independent
Television News by Martin Geissler highlighted the impact of climate
change on sub-Saharan Africa. He reported from Lesotho, a country of
less than two million people, which forms an enclave within South Africa
Impeach Now
By Paul Craig Roberts
Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and
Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at
war with Iran
What's Next
For America?
By Paul Buchheit
With the Bush Administration nearing its end, and
criticism of America's domestic and foreign policies at unprecedented
levels, it is time to devise a workable plan for our country's future.
This is an attempt to do so
Maria Made
Me Cry
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
I unexpectedly found myself crying over the Iraq
war as I read the obituary of Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz, a highly praised
Army nurse. What I read broke my heart. The story of this remarkable
woman and her tragic, pointless killing in Iraq had so much more power
than the endless statistics that have numbed our emotions and fed our
anger about Bush’s Iraq War
Mass Graves Dug
To Deal With Death Toll
By Ahmed Ali
The largest morgue in Diyala province is overflowing
daily. Officials told IPS they have had to dig mass graves to dispose
of bodies
Israeli
Apartheid
By Bruce Dixon
The apartheid state in question is, of course,
Israel. Its first class citizens are Israeli Jews, the majority of them
of European or sometimes American origin. The second class citizens
are Israeli Arabs, who enjoy significant but limited rights under the
law including token representation in the Knesset. The eleventh class
citizens are not citizens at all. They are Palestinians
Is This Ben
Gurion Or Hell?
By Remi Kanazi
Anyone who has traveled through Ben Gurion airport
in Israel knows that it is a unique experience. For most Israeli Jews,
the experience is comforting. For Palestinian-Americans and many activists
working in occupied Palestine it is quite a different experience
The SIM Card
Terror Case
By Binoy Kampmark
And now, citizens, or rather immigrants, must be
careful to lend their SIM cards to their relatives. In Australia, the
accessory might actually be charged, as Indian doctor Haneef Mohammad
was, for providing 'reckless support' to a terrorist organisation (or
to be more exact, Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed). Relatives should know better,
though I am sure all readers must know everything their second cousins
get up to. Naturally, not doing so renders you culpable
Two Island Tales,
The Use And Abuse Of Power
By Brian McAfee
The idyllic lives of two island based populations
were inexorably changed and came close to annihilation just to accommodate
U.S. supposed protection of democracy. Both Bikini Atoll in the Pacific
and the Indian Ocean's Diego Garcia island were populated by thriving,
self sufficient, fishing based population until coming under the radar
screen of British and U.S. hegemonic interests
Tensions Between
NATO And Russia Escalate
By Peter Schwarz
Tensions between NATO and the former states of
the Soviet Union reached a new climax last weekend, following Russia’s
unilateral withdrawal from the Treaty for Conventional Armed Forces
in Europe
17 July, 2007
Iraqi
River Carries Grotesque Cargo
By Mona Mahmoud & Sebastian Usher
Five hundred mutilated bodies dumped into the River
Tigris have been washed up in two years in the town of Suweira, 100km
south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad
Just Another
Day In Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn
The United States surge, the use of the American
troop reinforcements to bring violence in Iraq under control, is bloodily
failing across northern Iraq. That was proved again yesterday when a
suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives in Kirkuk killing
at least 85 people and wounding a further 183
Most Foreign
Insurgents In Iraq Are Saudis
By Peter Symonds
An article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times
detailing the national origins of foreign insurgents in Iraq has punctured
a large hole in the Bush administration’s relentless propaganda
against Iran. Most foreign fighters, however, come, not from Iran, but
Saudi Arabia, a close American ally, with which the Bush administration
in particular has intimate ties
Iran And Beyond:
Total War Is Still On The Horizon
By Glen Ford
An invasion of Iran is imminent, because that is
the only solution the Bush gang and the corporate mafia it serves can
conjure to rally the American people behind their quest for global dominance.
The Democratic Party is one with the Republicans in the mission to subjugate
Tehran
Out Of America
Or How I Became A Marxist
By Betty Wamalwa Muragori
Ms. Muragori arrived in the U.S. with the idea
that a highly developed economy bred highly developed people. African
Americans somehow manage to convince themselves that society has been
integrated, but the African lady saw differently, as she observed Blacks
and whites intersecting in the same space. "The new apartheid still
did not allow the twain to commune freely even as they congregated."
Militarizing
Mexico: The New War On Drugs
By Laura Carlsen
The United States' ill-conceived war on drugs has
failed at home and failed in Colombia. Mexico is up next
Biofuel Mania
Ends Days Of Cheap Food
By Gwynne Dyer
A sixth of all the grain grown in the United States
this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted
into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all
heading in the same direction
Bush, Health
And Education
By Fidel Castro
Yet another example of the plunder: “There
are more Ethiopian physicians in Chicago than in all of Ethiopia.”In
Cuba, where healthcare is not a commodity, we can do things that Bush
cannot even dream of
A
New Documentary Series
From Dharmasiri Bandaranayake
By Prasanna Ratnayake
Sri Lanka’s political problems cannot be
adequately understood without recognising the decades of systematic
discrimination and exclusion from our cultural life of our non-Sinhala
heritages. Dharmasiri Bandaranayake has made it a personal responsibility
to recover and re-present aspects of our true traditions essential to
the forging of a culturally coherent and liberated future for Sri Lanka
Democratic India
In The Development Index 2004
By Sarbeswar Sahoo
The paradox is that India and Indian democracy
claim to be shining when its people look pale and dejected. This paper
examines some of these paradoxes and the dismal position of democratic
India in the economic development and social opportunity index after
fifty-five plus years of its planned development and democratization,
thereby examining the relationship between democracy and development
16 July, 2007
Tuvalu Sounds The Alarm
By Kathy Marks
For Tuvalu, a string of nine picturesque atolls
and coral islands, global warming is not an abstract danger; it is a
daily reality. The tiny South Pacific nation, only four metres above
sea level at its highest point, may not exist in a few decades. Its
people are already in flight; more than 4,000 live in New Zealand, and
many of the remaining 10,500 are planning to join the exodus. Others,
though, are determined to stay and try to fight the advancing waves
The Human Cost
Of The June Floods In Britain
By Robert Stevens
The flooding disaster that struck villages, towns
and cities all over Britain in June has been met with callous indifference
by the Labour government of newly installed Prime Minister Gordon Brown
and by the Environment Agency
An Open Letter
To CNN
By Michael Moore
I expect CNN to put this matter to rest. Say you're
sorry and correct your story -- like any good journalist would. Then
we can get back to more important things. Like a REAL discussion about
our broken health care system. Everything else is a distraction from
what really matters
CNN vs. SiCKO
By Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Filmmaker Michael Moore appeared on CNN's Situation
Room on July 9 to talk about his new film Sicko--but ended up having
an animated discussion with host Wolf Blitzer about a CNN "fact
check" of the film that made several embarrassing errors
Plan Iraq:Permanent
Occupation
By Stephen Lendman
Drawdowns, withdrawal, timelines, mission shifting,
building democracy and all the other current and long-standing phony
rhetoric aside, America is in Iraq to stay as a conqueror and occupier
- that is, until Iraqis finally kick us out as they will in time in
a part of the world long a graveyard for foreign invaders. But it won't
happen quickly or before countless more thousands die, are injured,
suffer immeasurably, are displaced, and lose everything
US Middle East
Wars: Social Opposition
And Political Impotence
By James Petras
Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul,
Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists
and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me
why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over
the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001?
Partition Fears
Begin To Rise
By Ali al-Fadhily
Many Iraqis are now beginning to see the rising
sectarian violence as part of a larger plan to partition the country
A Vote For Bush
Was A Vote For The Terrorists
By Mary Shaw
In the run-up to the 2004 presidential election,
George W. Bush won the support of "red state" voters by touting
9/11 and the "war on terror" and convincing them that only
he could keep America safe. A vote for John Kerry would be a vote for
the terrorists. Now it appears that a vote for Bush was a vote for the
terrorists
Toward
A Palestinian-Led Rebuilding
By Osamah Khalil
The only solution to the fragmentation of the Palestinian
body politic is revitalization of Palestinian institutions by Palestinians.
These are certainly not the bodies Tony Blair or the Arab League will
work to assist. It is imperative that the Palestinians resist these
efforts to vitiate and co-opt the institutions which will form the core
of a revitalized national movement and an independent state
The Jesus The
Emperors Kidnapped
By Jorge Majfud
A few days ago the president of Venezuela, Hugo
Chávez, referred to Jesus as the greatest socialist in history.
I am not interested here in making a defense or an attack on his person.
I would only like to make a few observations about a typical reaction
caused by his words throughout different parts of the world
Crime Rate 13
Times More Than Militancy
In Jammu And Kashmir
By Syed Junaid Hashmi
In a state where voices seeking withdrawal of security
forces from civilian areas and giving the charge to the state police
are being looked upon with suspicion, official reports of Union Ministry
of Home Affairs and state home department when compared reveal that
incidents of normal crime reported and registered in the year 2006 are
13 times more than the militancy related incidents
Will Dalit
Christians Get Justice?
By M. Madhu Chandra
After constitutional denial of Scheduled Caste
origins converted to Christianity and Muslims after the Presidential
Order 1950, a million dollar question remains in the minds of Indian
Dalit Christians "Will the Judicial system of India give justice
to Indian Dalit Christians now after 57 years of injustice done to them?"
13 July, 2007
Global
Warming Is A
Human Rights Issue
By Mary Shaw
If action isn't taken immediately worldwide to
reduce carbon emissions, the consequences could be catastrophic. This
isn't just about polar bears and glaciers. It's about humanity. It's
about the right to protection from the deliberate and careless destruction
of people's homelands, property, and livelihoods. It's about the right
to observe one's native culture. It's about the basic human right to
physical integrity. All of these things are on the line for millions
of people if this problem isn't stopped now. In other words, global
warming a human rights issue
FDA
Gave Glaxo Extra Year To Profit Off Avandia
By Evelyn Pringle
A February 22, 2006 internal FDA memorandum, obtained
by staffers of the Senate Finance Committee, proves that safety officials
within the agency recommended that GlaxoSmithKline add a black box warning
about congestive heart failure to the label of the diabetes drug Avandia
well over a year ago
Sicko
By Stephen Gowans
Michael Moore’s Sicko is an entertaining
and emotionally compelling film. It exposes the harshness of profit-based
healthcare to the majority of Americans, and does so in the film-maker’s
accustomed engaging way
Eat, Fight, Fuck,
Pray
By Joshua Frank
Joe Bageant is author of Deer Hunting With Jesus:
Dispatches from America's Class War just published by Random House Crown.
He recently spoke with Joshua Frank about his newbook, religion, rednecks
and what it's like to serve beer to an underage horse
We Won, You
Lost
By Rand Clifford
Who are we? We’re the winners—America
loves a winner. In America there are winners, and everybody else. Remember
that old saying, "It’s not if you win or lose, it’s
how you play the game"? Turns out that’s the motto for suckers,
for losers. Winning is all that matters
How Terror
Has Lost Its Meaning
By John Chuckman
We know Bush is wrong also because the people who
genuinely hate democracy and freedom - the world’s oligarchs,
dictators, and strongmen - are people who hate terror themselves because
it threatens their security
Equatorial
Guinea: A Local Point Of View On
Assessments By International Experts
By Agustin Velloso
It is a shame that the children of Acurenam are
so ungrateful and spend their time stealing from defenceless Deputy
Ministers. Let’s just hope that police station visits and their
broken legs help them appreciate all that is done by Obiang, his government,
and the international press in their name. Then, maybe in years to come
they will be able to live on $2.10 a day
Rural Indebtedness
In India:
An Obstacle For Development
By Siba Sankar Mohanty
Rural indebtedness is increasingly being recognized
as a significant obstacle for rural development. It not only aggravates
inequality in the access to socioeconomic opportunities, but also hinders
the growth process in rural areas and creates an intergenerational handicap
for participating in democratic processes due to growing distress and
shocks to social psyche among the indebted households
A Passive
Resistance To Equality
By Mritiunjoy Mohanty
The decision of the Supreme Court to stay the implementation
of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act,
2006 is of a piece in the long tradition of the Indian judiciary to
oppose reservations that favour OBCs
12 July, 2007
The
Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness
By Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian
Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed
fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States
in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation
on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear
deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose
the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a
brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled
in newspaper accounts
Lessons From
The Lal Masjid Tragedy
By Robert Jensen
I felt angry at people like Ghazi and at the same
time a deep sorrow for his death. I felt a much deeper rage at Pakistan's
military president, Pervez Musharraf, and the U.S. leaders who support
him. And I felt a kind of fear for the Muslim fundamentalism that unleashes
such violent forces, which always reminds me of the equally frightening
Christian fundamentalist theology circulating in the United States
Behind The Red
Mosque
By Tarek Fatah
For too long, the U.S. has propped up men in uniform
who ruin the political and social fabric of Pakistan. The risks are
too high to continue playing this game of Pakistani roulette. Like his
hero Ayub Khan, Gen. Musharraf, too, has sucked almost a decade out
of the life of the nation. Like Ayub Khan, he, too, should go, or the
country will go, instead
Free The Jena
6!
By Alice Woodward
Jena, Louisiana: Nooses and White Supremacy
Indian
- Israeli Ties Could Neutralize
Delhi’s Palestinian Policy
By Nicola Nasser
An indicator of the new Indian strategic shift
is the Indian focus on the Palestinian – Israeli peace process
more than on the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation
Palestine In
Suicide
By Roni Ben Efrat
Among the Palestinians, a leadership will have
to emerge that resembles neither Hamas nor Fatah. It will have to be
both honest and realistic. It will have to put the common people first,
the workers and refugees—rather than trying to buy them off with
the drug of foreign charity or the promise of an otherworldly paradise
What Drove
A Doctor To Become
A Suicide Bomber?
By Chris Marsden
The detention of at least seven medics in connection
with last week’s failed terror attacks in Britain has added to
the public’s sense of shock. All the more so since the alleged
perpetrators of the attacks were both initially identified as doctors
working at Glasgow’s Royal Alexandra Hospital
What Lies
Beneath: Privileged Grotesques,
Ordinary Monsters And The Iraqi Deathscape
By Phil Rockstroh
At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the
majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem
he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to
the fact, he didn't deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling
our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant
and darker people) as long as "the mission" doesn't drag on
too long or reveal too much about ourselves
Remembering
The Maestro:
Music Master, Anti-Fascist
By Stephen Lendman
Today the Mastro would be in the artistic forefront
leading the struggle for the same freedoms he believed in when fascism
earlier engulfed Europe, Asia and North Africa in its greatest of all
wars. In words and stunning music, he'd be in the lead to prevent it
happening again so the spirit of equity, social justice and peace on
earth could prevail for all above the darkness of tyranny now threatening
everyone in the age of George Bush's America
A Letter
To My Son Regarding The Problem Of War
By Doug Soderstrom
During the past six years (ever since that of 9-11)
our world has been transformed into a seeming “holocaust of horrors,”
a world in which our president speaks of “wars without end.”
For your own welfare as a human being, I ask that you take the time
to listen to what I have to say, for how you respond may well determine
if you become a man of honor, one controlled by the inner voice of his
conscience, or that of an automaton, a mere piece of machinery, an inanimate
cog, doing what it has been told to do
11 July, 2007
Solar
Activity 'Not The Cause Of Global Warming'
By Steve Connor
Claims that increased solar activity is the cause
of global warming - rather than man-made greenhouse gases - have been
comprehensively disproved by a detailed study of the Sun
When Less Is
More: Learning About Limits
By Emily Spence
Let us try to keep in mind Buckminster Fuller's
words, “We are called to be the architects of the future, not
its victims.” If we cannot do so, we will surely learn about having
less by other means. However, the outcomes for the alternative ways
won't be any bit as pleasant as a concerts on a relatively mild, sunny
day. This is guaranteed
Preventing
More Lal Masjids
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Lal Masjid underscores the danger of runaway religious
radicalism in Pakistan. It calls for urgent and wide-ranging action
Lal Masjid Not
The Only Threat
By M B Naqvi
What do the Islamic extremists inside Lal Masjid
stand for? They stand for enforcing an Islamic shariah of their own
conception immediately. It is literalist Deobandi interpretation of
Islamic tenets. It rejects modernist interpretations of Islam. They
are bereft of modern education, indeed they reject the knowledge of
pure and applied sciences and modern thought on social subjects. They
want to take Pakistan back to early years of Islam. For that reason
they are a big and growing challenge to most Muslim countries
Musharraf's
Bloodbath At The Masjid
By Abid Mustafa
What is transpiring at Lal Masjid has all the hallmarks
of becoming a template for Musharraf to deal with other religious schools
and institutions- a recipe for civil war. Not to mention that the timing
of the crisis suits Musharraf, as it deflects the public's attention
away from the secular opposition and the government's disastrous response
to the floods in Balochistan
Making
Gaza "Scream"
By Stephen Lendman
With essential border crossings closed, supplies
aren't coming in. Fresh food, such as meat, fruit and dairy products
are disappearing. The World Food Program warns of dangerous food shortages
The Palestinian
Left: A Lost
Opportunity For Relevance
By Ramzy Baroud
There was hardly a Palestinian Left to begin with;
they lost the only opportunity that could’ve made them relevant,
and now they continue to pander to the status quo, yet posing as the
wise ones in an ocean of dim-witted multitudes: the precise definition
of intellectual elitism
The Danger Of
Rising Print Media
Monopoly In Australia
By Ghali Hassan
Nowhere in the world, has one print media played
such a dominant role in people’s lives than the Murdoch Press
in Australia. Supported by the Government’s policies of serving
big business and hunger for power, Australia’s print media has
become the most monopolistic in the ‘Western World’. Print
media monopoly constitutes great danger to free thought and democracy,
a frightening reminder of fascist dictatorships in Europe
Seize The
Moment
By David Truskoff
Time for you the young people of America to create
your own Progressive Party and create a system that will work for all
the people. Seek out a leader and perhaps you can save the soul of America
Labeling Terrorists
By Ram Puniyani
One just hopes that the major powers of the World
put an end to attacking one country after the other, Afghanistan, Iraq,
and threatening Iran on permanent basis, stop the atrocities on the
people of those countries, and the sectarian violence is stopped here
in India, so that the likes of Dr. Mohammad Haneef and Dr. Sabeel Ahmad
do their profession of saving lives rather than undertaking the things
which take the lives of innocents
07 July, 2007
Over
6 Million Face Food Insecurity In Afghanistan
By IRIN News
Three out of 10 Afghans suffer from chronic food
insecurity, which badly affects the health and well-being of the estimated
27-million nation, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Slouching Toward
A Palestinian Holocaust
By Richard Falk
It is especially painful for me, as an American
Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse
of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory
metaphor as 'holocaust.'
The United
States Of Israel
By Margaret Kimberley
The 4th of July is supposed to be a celebration
of U.S. independence. But no one can honestly claim that the U.S. is
independent of Israel and its immensely powerful domestic lobby
Al-Qaeda
In Iraq Bush's Creation
By Bill Gallagher
Bin Laden never had any kind of relationship with
Saddam, but many intimates of our president did. So far, they have been
able to choke the life out of that truth
Senator
Specter Fights For Constitution
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
On the Friday before July 4 Republican Senator
Arlen Specter showed his respect for the U.S. Constitution and his anger
about President Bush’s repeated pissing on it by introducing the
Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007. What happens to this crucial
bill will test both congressional integrity and courage
Mela Chamliyal
- Yet To Become
A Testimonial Of Friendship
By Syed Junaid Hashmi
Standing barely at a distance of 600 yards from
the shrine of Baba Chamliyal, 11 year old Shifa Fatima, daughter of
an officer of Pakistan Rangers' wonders, why she cannot visit the shrine
of the saint whose martyrdom signifies irrelevance of boundaries. She
questions the building trust between India and Pakistan saying that
if both the countries are trying to be triumphant over each other's
heart, then why she cannot cross over and interact with children from
this side
06 July, 2007
A
Message From The Melting Slopes Of Everest
By Cahal Milmo & Sam Relph
Fifty-four years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay became the first men to scale Everest, their sons have said the
mountain is now so ravaged by climate change that they would no longer
recognise it
Australian
Defence Minister Admits Oil
A Key Factor Behind Iraq Occupation
By Patrick O’Connor
Australia’s Minister for Defence Brendan
Nelson yesterday acknowledged that maintaining control over Iraq’s
vast oil reserves was a critical factor behind the ongoing US-led occupation.
His comments came just before Prime Minister John Howard delivered a
major foreign policy address, similarly stressing the need to ensure
“energy security” amid growing “great power competition”
in the Middle East
Israeli
Forces Kill Six In Gaza Camp offensive
By Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have killed six
activists of the Palestinian resistance and have wounded four others
and six civilians, including two children and a journalist, in the context
of an offensive on al-Boreij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip
that has been ongoing since Thursday morning, 5 July 2007. According
to investigations conducted by PCHR, IOF have prevented Palestinian
medical crews from attending the wounded
Under Sustained
US Pressure, Iraqi Cabinet
Sends Oil Law To Parliament
By James Cogan
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went before
the media on Tuesday to announce that his cabinet had “unanimously”
approved US-backed draft legislation covering the future development
of Iraq’s vast oil resources. The parliament, he declared, would
begin debating the oil law the following day. He trumpetted his achievement
as a key step towards finalising the “most important law in Iraq”
Killing 15,000
Iraqis Every Month
By Michael Schwartz
A state-of-the-art research study published in
October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical
journal) concluded that—as of a year ago—600,000 Iraqis
had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death
rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.
That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing
precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was
approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further
during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge
Files: Focus
On The Presidents Who Ordered
Each Specific CIA Crime Against Humanity
By Jay Janson
These U.S. presidents, were presented in media
as jovial, pleasant, charming, law abiding citizens as honest as the
day is long in their characters, and smiling to us on TV, all the while
they were deceitfully engaged in criminal activity world wide
Strike The
Root
By Sheila Samples
Recently, Nova M Radio's Mike Malloy suggested
the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is
more "rage fatigue" than a lack of knowledge or comprehension
of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for
many of us, rather than fatigue, it's more an inability to "focus"
on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too
many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national
paralysis
Life, Liberty,
And The Pursuit OfPersonal Gratification:
“Here There Be Monsters”
By Jason Miller
As long as greed, self-absorption, selfishness,
and consumerism are so deeply woven into our sociocultural fabric, we
who comprise the collective in the United States will exist as a living
testament to Victor Hugo’s observation that, “Adversity
makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”
Racists
By Pranoti Chirmuley
'RACISTS' concerns about the West's obsession with
proving the supremacy of a particular race during the early 18th and
19th century
Marxism And
The New Synthesis In Moral Psychology
By Thomas Riggins
Jonathan Haidt, of the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, has an important article in the May 18, 2007 issue
of Science ("The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology." Since
we live in a time of rampant amorality (to say nothing of immorality)
in government and civil society, I think a review of this article will
further advance a study of the role of Marxist thinking in our times
Extreme Solutions
By Zia-Ur-Rehman
The role of TNSM in Talibanising the Malakand --
a journey into history up to the present times
Protecting
Culture Or Fishing In Troubled Waters?
By Prasanna Ratnayake
As books are no longer the main means of circulating
modern culture, the attack is now on cinema. We are forced, or at least
inclined to conclude that the methods of fascism have not changed greatly
since the last century
Despite Years
Of Turmoil Sufism
Still Holds Sway In Doda
By Renu Bhran & Syed Junaid Hashmi
Ask people in district Doda, they would tell you
that being an area where Sufism has been thriving from centuries, possibility
of communities getting engaged in religious, regional, racist and gender
conflicts are meager. Despite changing times, Sufism continues to enjoy
supremacy in district Doda
04 July, 2007
Global
Warming: A Sudden Change Of State
By George Monbiot
The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by
as much as 59cm this century. James Hansen’s paper argues that
the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn’t fit the
data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not
melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state
to another. When temperatures increased to 2-3 degrees above today’s
level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 centimeters but
by 25 meters. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature
Call Out The
Instigator
By Cindy Sheehan
I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself
from the political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into an Evil
Empire, but the blatant audacity of George commuting Scooter’s
sentence (he’s not ruling out a full pardon —and you know
he will) has dragged me kicking and screaming back in. I can’t
sit back and let this BushCo drag our country further down into the
murky quagmire of Fascism and violence, taking the rest of the world
with them!
The Freeing Of
Lewis Libby: Government Criminality
And The Class Nature Of American “Justice”
By Bill Van Auken
The decision of the Bush White House to commute
the jail sentence of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief
of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is a telling demonstration
of both the criminal character of the US government and the inequality
that pervades American society
When Presidents
Pardon Their Own Crimes
By David Swanson
Now is the moment for members of the public to
act. Go to your Congress Member's office. Sit down. Read the U.S. Constitution
aloud. Do not leave until they take you to jail
Who Am I?
By David Truskoff
What a wonderful world. All one has to do is go
to Israel and become a citizen, get a bonus, bulldoze down someone else's
house and get one built for you for free. You need not worry about the
last resident and his children starving because God gave you the land
and God is on your side All you have to do is claim to be Jewish
Fourteen Congress
Members For Impeachment
By David Swanson
Congress is off this week, so your Representative
is home making appearances at community events. What a great opportunity
to grab a video camera and ask them point blank: what's your excuse
for not co-sponsoring H.Res. 333 ? Democrats.com is paying $100 for
each "no excuse" video asking a Democrat in the House why
(s)he has not co-sponsored H.Res. 333 and recording their response on
video
The Air Force
vs. Rev. Lennox Yearwood
By Kevin Zeese
Air Force Claims Anti-war Minister, Rev. Lennox
Yearwood is a National Security Threat!
Grassroots
Movements Change
The Face Of Power In Latin America
By Nadia Martinez
As the people of Latin America build democracies
from the bottom up, the symbols of power are changing. What used to
be emblems of poverty and oppression - indigenous clothing and
speech, the labels "campesino" and "landless worker"
- are increasingly the symbols of new power. As people-powered
movements drive the region toward social justice and equality, these
symbols speak, not of elite authority limited to a few, but of power
broadly shared
India-Pakistan;
Suspects In Each Others Eyes
By Syed Junaid Hashmi
"A joint mechanism on terror has been formed,
bus service has been started, Rail services have become operational
and people to people contacts have increased yet mistrust, suspicion,
skepticism have become a part of such ceremonial meetings between India
and Pakistan," said Senior leader of People's Democratic Party
Nizamuddin Bhat. He added that these points could become points of emotional
integration and help in strengthening the bond of love and liking between
the people on the two sides
Kashmir Dialogue
Process Needs To Be Broadened
By Wajahat Habibullah & Priyashree Andley
An interview with India’s Chief Information
Commissioner, Wajahat Habibullah, who is also New Delhi’s expert
hand on Kashmir affairs
03 July, 2007
Airstrike
Leaves Over 100 Dead
In Afghanistan
By Tom Carter
Late in the day on June 29, more than a hundred
people were killed in a massive US-led airstrike on the village of Hyderabad,
located in the Grishk district of the southern province of Helmand in
Afghanistan. According to Dur Ali Shah, the mayor of the district, at
least 107 people were killed in the attack, which can only be described
as a massacre
The Killing
Machine
By Fidel Castro
The American empire has created a veritable killing
machine that is made up not only of the CIA and its methods. Bush has
established powerful and expensive intelligence and security super-structures,
and he has transformed all the air, sea and land forces into instruments
of world power that take war, injustice, hunger and death to any part
of the globe, in order to educate its inhabitants in the exercise of
democracy and freedom. The American people are gradually waking up to
this reality
Lewis "Scooter"
Libby Sentence Commuted
By Stephen Lendman
Expeditiously removing a lawless president and
vice-president from office is the only remaining hope of restoring the
rule of law and showing those in contempt of it won't go unpunished
as Mr. Libby has
Reinventing
A War Criminal
By Stephen Lendman
Based on his sordid war criminal record post-9/11,
Tony Blair won't likely have the qualms that got James Wolfensohn to
resign his job. He's taking it to reinvent himself, but that's no more
likely than convincing carnivores to become vegetarians. He'll first
visit Ramallah in the West Bank, showing up as a Trojan horse fooling
no one about what's behind his slick-tongued hypocrisy
Enter Turkey
By Paul Craig Roberts
Perhaps the clearest indication that the war in
Iraq is no longer under American control is Turkey's announcement of
plans to invade northern Iraq, the home of the Iraqi Kurds. As June
2007 came to an end, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul announced
that if US or Iraqi forces did not eliminate the Kurdish guerrillas
that were attacking Turkey, the Turkish Army would move into northern
Iraq to deal with the situation
Injustice In
Jena As Nooses Hang
From The "White Tree"
By Bill Quigley
All White Jury sitting before White Judge agrees
with White Prosecutor and All White Witnesses and Convicts Black Youth
in Racially Charged High School Criminal Case
Economic
Siege Of Gaza Leading
To Humanitarian Crisis
By Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli Occupation Forces have denied the flow
of goods into the Gaza Strip. If IOF continue to close the crossing,
the Gaza Strip will soon suffer from a humanitarian crisis as the storages
of basic foodstuffs will run out soon. Such crisis will severely impact
at least 73 percent of the population who live below the poverty line
Who Will Save
Palestine?
By Sonja Karkar
If the leaders cannot do it, then the people themselves
and everyone who believes in justice and peace the world over may yet
indeed find a way to save Palestine – and not before time
An Open Letter
To America:Now Is The Time
For Us To Stand Up And Stand Together
By Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.
The power of our voices against the U.S. occupation
of Iraq is reaching the top echelons of the military and the administration.
Our government is persecuting Americans who speak out against the U.S.
military presence in Iraq. The U.S. military has launched politicized
attacks on its own military members and moral leaders who oppose the
war to discredit their voices of dissent
We Got Mugged,So
Let’s Get Hemp Back
King Hemp Part-3
By Rand Clifford
Prohibition of cannabis hemp was a mugging, a twisted
and diabolical assault on the rights, health and well-being of Americans
unparalleled in our history for sheer scope of lasting impact. Never
has brazen self interest cost so many people so much for so long. And
the number of entrenched industries with profits threatened by hemp
have greatly multiplied in number, and political influence
Madhya Pradesh:
Water Becoming
Reason Of `Civil War'
By Sachin Kumar Jain
Bhopal is considered the worst endemic city for
gastroenteritis in the country and in 22 districts the amount of fluorides
in water is above permissible limits. As per a study, 16000 children
in Seoni district and 120 villages in Guna district are affected the
flourosis. Children do not get clean drinking water in about 30118 schools
02 July, 2007
Massacre
In Baghdad’s Sadr City
By Patrick Martin
In one of the largest raids into the largely Shiite
Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad, US forces killed some 26 people
and detained another 17, according to an announcement by a military
spokesman Saturday. The early-morning raid produced an explosion of
violence, with US tanks and helicopters opening fire in the densely
populated working-class neighborhood and destroying both vehicles and
entire buildings
"Abu Henry"
And The Mysterious Silence
By Robert Fisk
"Abu Henry" says we may have to remain
in Afghanistan for decades to protect Afghans from the Taliban. Our
ambassador in Kabul--Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, KCMG, LVO, to be precise--apparently
sees no contradiction in this extraordinary prediction
A
Dark Summit
By Uri Avnery
The declared task of Blair is to "strengthen
Abbas". Woe to the task. Woe to Blair. Woe in particular to Abbas
Finding Lessons
In Gaza's Bloodshed
By Ramzy Baroud
The Hamas-Fatah clash that has culminated into
a mini-civil war in recent weeks is both old and new, and while some
of its elements are uniquely Palestinian, much of it was manufactured
at the behest of US-Israeli intelligence and governments
Should Spanish
Toops Be Withdrawn From Lebanon?
By Agustin Velloso
Mr. Zapatero desires an impossible miracle: that
Spanish troops in Lebanon serve "the cause of peace and solidarity",
as he stated in the Spanish Congress, while at the same time selling
weapons to Israel, joining Israel in military maneuvers, and playing
along with the American policy in the region. Many Spaniards don't know
what UNIFIL represents and what relations Spain has with Israel, but
it is certain that Arabs do know and are displeased by it
Blair's Future
Is Brown
By Mohammad Kamaali
The day a war criminal becomes an envoy of peace
is an Orwellian nightmare having come true, and a wake up call to us
all
Put Away The Flags
By Howard Zinn
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism
and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems,
its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed
Independence
Day Hypocrisy
By Stephen Lendman
On this "independence day" and all others,
think of them and our own deprived millions at home. Then imagine a
future time free of that condition because enough people mobilized to
change things bettering everyone. That would be something worth giving
thanks for and celebrating
The Palestinian
Hamas –
Vision, Violence, And Coexistence
By Jim Miles
The Palestinian Hamas presents a sympathetic portrait
of the movement, a movement with surprising – again the word –
flexibility and a high degree of democracy, counter to the western Orientalist
view that Islam cannot be democratic. It is a tightly written narrative,
focussing almost exclusively on the Hamas, and introducing components
of Israeli action and ideology, and that of the PLO, only as necessary
for understanding Hamas itself
This Is Not
A Story About Binayak Sen
By Subhash Gatade
This is not a story of the fifty plus Children's
doctor Binayak Sen from Raipur, Chattisgarh who is at present languishing
in jail under draconian provisions of a law which has declared him a
'terrorist' because he had the courage to speak truth to power
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