NEWS AND VIEWS

Items I find interesting or important - not directly connected with my business. Some items are on this page, some are linked to separate pages on this or other websites. Items on this website dated 18 March 2005 or earlier are on separate pages - see FULL NEWS ARCHIVE INDEX for listing. Index shows date of posting on this website.

You may also be interested in LINKS to sites on related topics, especially the HEALTH, DIRECTORIES and CHANGING THE WORLD sections, and the Adult Education courses "TALKING POLITICS" and "CHANGING OURSELVES, CHANGING OUR WORLD"

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INDEX 2008 - INDEX 2007 - INDEX 2006 -INDEX 2005  -  OTHER NEWS WEBSITES -
  ZNN ALTERNATIVE NEWS

OTHER NEWS WEBSITES; Common Dreams "News and views for the progressive community" - US based. Complementary Healthcare Information Service (CHIS-UK) Friends Of The Earth UK (Press releases) From The Wilderness Mike Ruppert's excellent site. What's wrong with official story on Sept. 11 2001, US plans for war in Colombia, CIA, USA politicians and the drugs trade, peak oil....No longer updates, but archives are still online. Mirror site was at http://www.copvcia.com Globalinfo.org "Daily news service of the developing world" - news on site, also offers free news feed to your website. Indymedia UK  "network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues". Some good impartial comment, and some total pillocks. ZNet "A community for people committed to social change". Includes articles by Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Robert Fisk and many more.

INDEX 2008

14 May COLOMBIAN EX-WARLORDS SENT TO US

9 May TOP POLICEMAN SHOT DEAD IN MEXICO

3 May FORM-FILLING COULD KILL OFF ADULT LEARNING

3 February DEPRESSION 2.0

2 February FIBROMYALGIA, LYRICA AND THE NEW YORK TIMES

6 January NUCLEAR ALERT: PM'S BRIBE BOOSTS DUMPING OF WASTE

1 January EXIT 2007: DENIALS & TONTERIA (i.e. NONSENSE)

INDEX 2007

10 December MORTGAGE MELTDOWN; INTEREST RATE 'FREEZE' - THE REAL STORY IS FRAUD

9 October DIGGING A HOLE TO CHINA

24 September KIDS GET TAUGHT HUMAN RIGHTS

5 September THE GREAT GLOBAL COAL RUSH

4 September A BRAND-FREE LIFE

8 June MASSACRES AND PARAMILITARY LAND SEIZURES BEHIND THE BIOFUEL REVOLUTION

30 April HOW MULTICULTURALISM IS BETRAYING WOMEN

24 April FASCIST AMERICA, IN 10 EASY STEPS

17 April IRAN MAY BE THE GREATEST CRISIS OF MODERN TIMES

5 April SECRET BRITISH MILITARY DELEGATION ARRIVED IN TEHRAN AS AHMADINEJAD PUSHED FOR IMMEDIATE MILITARY CONFRONTATION

9 March JUICING THE STOCK MARKET; THE SECRET MANEUVERINGS OF THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM

16 February RUSSIA THREATENS TO QUIT ARMS TREATY

13 January BLUNDERING INTO SOMALIA YET AGAIN

INDEX 2006

27 December ADULTS ABANDON FURTHER EDUCATION

6 November 92-YEAR-OLD TURKISH ARCHAEOLOGIST TO BE TRIED FOR SAYING HEAD SCARVES LINKED TO SEX RITES

25 October AUSTRALIAN TREASURER SEEKS ORDERLY WITHDRAWAL FROM U.S. DOLLAR

19 October WHO KILLED ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA?

10 October THE EMERGING RUSSIAN GIANT PLAYS ITS CARDS STRATEGICALLY

4 October WHO BENEFITS FROM THE AFGHAN OPIUM TRADE?

4 October LETTER TO A GENERAL - STOP KILLING THE AFGHANS

4 October BOMBING PAKISTAN BACK TO THE STONE AGE

2 October INSIDE BURMA'S REBEL ARMY: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST A REGIME PROPPED UP BY FOREIGN OIL

22 September MORALES TAKES COCA CAMPAIGN TO U.N.

21 September ACQUITTAL FOR TURKISH NOVELIST

22 August THE 'WAR PRESIDENT'S' LATEST FIASCO

2 August CHINA'S GROWING POLLUTION REACHES U.S.

1 August CHOLESTEROL, LIPITOR, AND BIG GOVERNMENT

1 August ITALY'S WATERGATE - ESPIONAGE, SECRECY, AND CORRUPTION: LESSONS FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

22 June WORLD GRAIN STOCKS FALL TO 57 DAYS OF CONSUMPTION: GRAIN PRICES STARTING TO RISE

8 May UNDER MARGARET BECKETT, FARMERS HAVE BEEN THE VICTIMS OF INCOMPETENCE TO MATCH ANYTHING AT THE HOME OFFICE

21 April FACING DOWN IRAN

4 April IS IT MURDER OR ISN'T IT?

28 March EVENING CLASSES TO DOUBLE CHARGES

24 March FOOD, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS

17 March WHY ALL THE FOREIGN BASES?

16 March MI5, CAMP DELTA, AND THE STORY THAT SHAMES BRITAIN

15 March THE SECRET WAR AGAINST THE DEFENSELESS PEOPLE OF WEST PAPUA

7 March BUSH, CHAVEZ AND HITLER

3 March AMERICA'S GLORIOUS EMPIRE OF DEBT

2 March CANNABIS AND THE BRAIN: A USER'S GUIDE

22 February STATELESS IN SOMALIA, AND LOVING IT

20 February STATE OF WAR: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

20 February A HALF-DOZEN QUESTIONS ABOUT 9/11 THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO ASK

20 February CHURCHILL, HITLER, AND NEWT - GINGRICH AND THE PUSH FOR WAR ON IRAN

15 February THE POLITICS OF FEAR (OR HOW TONY BLAIR MISLED US OVER THE WAR ON TERROR)

14 February GREED OF THE HIGHEST ORDER AND THE WORST PRIVATISATION SINCE RAIL 

8 February IT'S CAPITALISM OR A HABITABLE PLANET - YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH 

8 February 2008 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - CHOOSE YOUR FOREIGN POLICY POISON 

6 February ENERGY EFFICIENCY "ONLY WAY" TO CURB SPIRALLING FUEL BILLS

2 February SMALLER FIRMS MAY FACE POLLUTION LIMITS

23 January NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN WITH IRAN

23 January IRAN'S BOMB

19 January EVIDENCE OF A STOLEN ELECTION

INDEX 2005

22 December BOLIVIA ELECTS RADICAL PRESIDENT

19 December  ‘EU AND US FAIL WORLD’S POOR AT WTO SUMMIT’ - MEP

15 November THE US USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ - AND THEN LIED ABOUT IT

2 November CLIMATE CHANGE: 10 WAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD

26 October TASK FORCE URGES £20M GRANTS FOR GREEN FUEL BOILERS

29 September KATRINA - ARMED DOLPHINS TRAINED BY US MILITARY MAY HAVE ESCAPED

22 September 'GET OFF THE FUCKING FREEWAY': THE SINKING STATE LOOTS ITS OWN SURVIVORS - TRYING TO LEAVE NEW ORLEANS

13 September GREENS SAY BROWN DANGEROUSLY SHORT-SIGHTED OVER OIL PROBLEMS

26 August FOOTBALL FANS ARE IDIOTS 

25 July IRAN SITS PRETTY IN WORLD'S HOTTEST REGION

24 July THE END OF OIL - CONFERENCE ON PEAK OIL, FOOD AND THE ECONOMY, LONDON, 11TH OCTOBER 2005

20 July POST-SOVIET LESSONS FOR A POST-AMERICAN CENTURY

19 July REFORMERS AND HARDLINERS - WHAT DO IRAN, VENEZUELA AND BELARUS HAVE IN COMMON?

15 July FLUORIDE FOLLIES

13 July GLASGOW'S DIET WAS HEALTHIER IN 1405

4 June WHY OUR FOOD IS SO DEPENDENT ON OIL

3 June U.S., RUSSIA STILL FACE MUTUAL DESTRUCTION THREAT

6 April DRUGS, BASES AND JAILS - WHAT'S GOING ON IN AFGHANISTAN?

17 March DO HUMANS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING?

17 March COMING TO TERMS WITH CHINA

4 March MICHAEL MEACHER ON THE UKRAINE, OIL, AND GEOPOLITICS

3 March THE DANGEROUS IMPLICATIONS OF THE HARIRI ASSASSINATION AND THE US RESPONSE

1 March NORTH KOREA IN WINTER

 

14 May COLOMBIAN EX-WARLORDS SENT TO US

"Colombia has extradited 14 former paramilitary leaders to the US to face charges of drug trafficking. Officials said the men had failed to abide by a peace deal under which their groups were demobilised....They are facing charges of drug trafficking, conspiracy and money laundering and are to be tried in Washington, Miami, Tampa, New York and Houston....

The paramilitaries were set up and funded by wealthy landowners and drug traffickers to combat left-wing guerrillas. They have been accused of committing some of the country's worst atrocities and of being responsible for the deaths of thousands of people."

Full article at BBC

9 May TOP POLICEMAN SHOT DEAD IN MEXICO

"A senior Mexican police official has been gunned down in the capital, Mexico City, officials have said.

Edgar Millan Gomez was in charge of co-ordinating national police operations against drugs traffickers. He was shot nine times outside his home early on Thursday and died later in hospital, officials said.....Police are investigating if the attack was drug-related. Several top policemen have been killed in the past week....Mexico has seen a surge in drug-related killings recently. Last year, 2,500 people were killed; so far this year, 1,100 people have been killed."

Full article at BBC.

Paul's comment - Drugs are big business in Mexico, whose long border is much used to carry illegal drugs into the USA. Police and army may collude with drug-runners. Government officials may be corrupt, and the governing party has held on to power for decades. So it's not easy to decide who are the "good guys". Parts of the country are under the de facto control of the Zapatistas, a radical movement of resistance. 

3 May FORM-FILLING COULD KILL OFF ADULT LEARNING

"Is the government slowly suffocating adult education? It is already clear that the post-Leitch focus on "economically valuable skills" has cost adult education over 1.4 million learners over the past two years. But there is perhaps a more insidious threat than the re-direction of funding away from informal adult education. It lies in the obsessive push for accountability, driven by the government and enforced by the Learning and Skills Council and Ofsted....

In a typical WEA adult education class, tutors must submit a course outline and set out the learning outcomes (LOs). Students must be assessed against each LO at the start and end of each course. Tutors must distribute learning records (LRs) to students at the first class. These must be collected and the courses modified in the light of student responses. At the end of courses, these LRs must be issued again alongside an evaluation form. The tutor must then collect these, read them, and fill out a tutor report. This involves providing extraordinary detail on topics too numerous to mention here, including "how well did you meet the learners' needs and interests" and "how well did you guide and support learners to progress"."

Spot on. Full article at The Guardian (published April 15).

3 February DEPRESSION 2.0

"Depression 1.0 started about 1929 and ended around 1940 with the entry of the US into World War II. Even then, many economists say that, had the US not entered WW2, the depression would have continued for years in the US, and the rest of the world. Now, since World War II, the US and West entered a period of unparalleled post war prosperity. This resulted in an incredible rise in the standard of living in the US and West. People don't realize, but much of the US didn't even have electricity in the 1920's!

The combination of a post war prosperity boom, cheap energy, and also a huge credit boom resulted in incredible economic growth. (Oil was new, guys, the world used coal and steam and wood prior to the 1900's, how far we have come in a few decades, no?) 

Modern big investors are saying that what we are witnessing right now is not merely another recession. It is the end of a 60 year post World War 2 prosperity and credit boom. It drove the whole world economy, and the US led the show. The USD was used as a world reserve currency during World War II when the war in Europe threatened to collapse the European currencies and the Pound."

Full article by Chris Laird at Gold-Eagle.com.

2 February FIBROMYALGIA, LYRICA AND THE NEW YORK TIMES

"in the wake of the FDA approval of Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat fibromyalgia, the New York Times has published a controversial article questioning whether the disease exists at all..........Adding to the controversy is the fact that Lyrica itself is a drug originally designed for diabetic nerve pain that was rejected because of its unimpressive results and many side effects, including weight gain, edema, dizziness and sleepiness."

Dr. Joseph Mercola comments; "Fibromyalgia is a real and debilitating condition that primarily affects women, characterized by chronic, widespread pain with no known cause....brain scans of people with fibromyalgia have offered hard evidence of what patients already know: Their pain IS real – mainly because their threshold for tolerating pain impulses is substantially lower than that of most individuals. But the mechanism causing this lowered pain threshold is unknown."

Dr. Mercola suggests various treatment options. Full article at Mercola.com.

 

6 January NUCLEAR ALERT: PM'S BRIBE BOOSTS DUMPING OF WASTE

"Secret deal will be followed by £1bn move to find long-term disposal facility for the most dangerous radioactive waste, so securing the future of nuclear power plants. Nuclear chiefs are to give Britons millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to accept the dumping of radioactive waste near their home."

Full article by Geoffrey Lean at The Independent.

1 January 2008 EXIT 2007: DENIALS & TONTERIA

"Wall Street is in deep sneakers. They are busy putting a positive spin on 2007, which in mid-year unleashed the beginning of an unstoppable nightmare. The first cracks were revealed in gory fashion in the form of subprime mortgages blasting fissures through the entire bank and bond system. The next cracks will blossom into a mindboggling series of shocks next year. The US Federal Reserve planted millions of seeds, led by Alan Appleseed Greenspan, during almost two years of ridiculously irresponsible low interest rates so as to assure a doomed outcome. One should never entrust US-based lending institutions to create mortgage products, to approve of loans, to work (collude) with appraisers, the end result of which is massive creation of new debt destined to implode...

...Next year, a reign of financial and economic terror will befall the world banking system, with the United States as its origin. The shock waves will have California as its epicenter, the creative laboratory of nutty mortgage design. The US banking system will finally be recognized as destroyed, insolvent, and entirely dysfunctional. The repair process in reaction will be interesting to behold, as money will be printed, created, and dispensed at a clip never seen before in a multi-national fashion in the history of mankind. So far, no level of desperation can be detected...

The past several weeks have included a boatload of denials and a large dose of tontaria (Spanish: nonsense). This article is a brief attempt to address the denials and tontaria, a reflection upon the completed year. In no way is any claim made of being a comprehensive listing of blatant deceptions. That requires a 200-page book."

Good article giving an overview of some of the ongoing big problems. Full article by Jim Willie at Kitco.com.

 

10 December MORTGAGE MELTDOWN; INTEREST RATE 'FREEZE' - THE REAL STORY IS FRAUD

Bankers pay lip service to families while scurrying to avert suits, prison;

"New proposals to ease (the USA)  great mortgage meltdown keep rolling in...

Now, just unveiled Thursday, comes the "freeze," the brainchild of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. It sounds good: For five years, mortgage lenders will freeze interest rates on a limited number of "teaser" subprime loans. Other homeowners facing foreclosure will be offered assistance from the Federal Housing Administration.

But unfortunately, the "freeze" is just another fraud - and like the other bailout proposals, it has nothing to do with U.S. house prices, with "working families," keeping people in their homes or any of that nonsense.

The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value - right now almost 10 times their market worth."

Full article by Sean Olender at SFGate.com.

9 October DIGGING A HOLE TO CHINA

"(On 8 August) China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China’s considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds “contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.” Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, “the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.” 

If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve. 

The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is “the world’s sole superpower,” whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality....Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China’s power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush’s wars."

Full article (posted August 8) at Counterpunch.

24 September KIDS GET TAUGHT HUMAN RIGHTS

"CHILDREN as young as nine are being taught about human rights and global issues in York - sparking claims they are being "brainwashed" by political correctness.

A new scheme has started in York primary schools this week to teach pupils global citizenship, anti-discrimination and human rights - topics some argue can be highly political and should not be taught to such young children.

In total 12 city primary schools in York will work with the first Global Dimension Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) in the region and have the opportunity to learn about global issues."

Full article at York Press.

5 September THE GREAT GLOBAL COAL RUSH

"The dirtiest fossil fuel of all is on the resurgent, dressed in climate-friendly garb. We'd be wise not to flirt with it". The author is very scathing about "the coal industry's shiniest silver bullet: carbon capture and storage (CCS), whereby billions upon billions of tones of CO2 will one day be pumped underground." Costly and a long way-off, he thinks. Personally I think it is also just the wrong sort of solution.

Full article by John Harris (Titled "The great global coal rush puts us on the fast track to irreversible disaster") at The Guardian.

4 September A BRAND-FREE LIFE

"Neil Boorman torched his designer wardrobe and possessions and tried to live a brand-free life for a year - so how did he do?" Article (titled "My Brand New Life") at BBC Magazine.

8 June MASSACRES AND PARAMILITARY LAND SEIZURES BEHIND THE BIOFUEL REVOLUTION

"Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.

Surging demand for "green" fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia's population of 3 million displaced people and adding to one of the world's worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo."

Full article at The Guardian.

30 April HOW MULTICULTURALISM IS BETRAYING WOMEN

"It would be easy to congratulate ourselves on our tolerance of the fanatically intolerant .....

Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose. 

The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.

So Nishal went to the courts to request an early divorce, hoping that once they were no longer married he would leave her alone. A judge who believed in the rights of women would find it very easy to make a judgement: you're free from this man, case dismissed. But Judge Christa Datz-Winter followed the logic of multiculturalism instead. She said she would not grant an early divorce because - despite the police documentation of extreme violence and continued threats - there was no "unreasonable hardship" here.

Why? Because the woman, as a Muslim, should have "expected" it, the judge explained. She read out passages from the Koran to show that Muslim husbands have the "right to use corporal punishment". Look at Sura 4, verse 34, she said to Nishal, where the Koran says he can hammer you. That's your culture. Goodbye, and enjoy your beatings."

Full article at The Independent.

24 April FASCIST AMERICA, IN 10 EASY STEPS

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all. Article at The Guardian.

17 April IRAN MAY BE THE GREATEST CRISIS OF MODERN TIMES 

"As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 11 September 2001. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oil wealth among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by US and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.

Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East, where OPEC has ensured that oil business is conducted between states. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway is another prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as nonexistent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so nonexistent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the coming American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian program to military use. For the past three years, IAEA inspectors have said they have been allowed to "go anywhere." The recent UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.

Full article by John Pilger at AntiWar.com.

5 April SECRET BRITISH MILITARY DELEGATION ARRIVED IN TEHRAN AS AHMADINEJAD PUSHED FOR IMMEDIATE MILITARY CONFRONTATION

Interesting article written before the 15 UK sailors were released. 

"In a second take from Tehran, DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources continue coverage of the top-level Iranian debate on how to dispose of the 15 British captives seized on March 23. The fierce – often strident - debate between pragmatists and radicals prompted supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who leads the first camp, to order president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who speaks for the radicals, to call off his planned news conference on Tuesday, April 3. The president had intended to unveil an important advance in the national nuclear program; he certainly did not mean to augur a breakthrough in the 12-day hostage crisis. 

In the ongoing debate, the president and his radical followers seek to use the British captives to goad the British, followed by the Americans, into a limited military confrontation in the Persian Gulf. Iran would then exploit its local edge to teach the West that it is not worth their while to mess with the Islamic Republic in a full-blown war or count on trouncing it easily."

Full article at Debkafile. NB this website is stated by some to be close to Mossad or to its thinking. Don't know if this is true. But then you always wonder what ANY website's hidden agenda is, don't you!?

9 March JUICING THE STOCK MARKET; THE SECRET MANEUVERINGS OF THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM

"The Working Group on Financial Markets, also know as the Plunge Protection Team, was created by Ronald Reagan to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown of October 1987. Its members include the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Chairman of the SEC and the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Recently, the team has been on high-alert given the increased volatility of the markets and, what Hank Paulson calls, "the systemic risk posed by hedge funds and derivatives.”

......"This suggests that the PPT may have been deeply involved in last Wednesday’s “miraculous” stock market rebound from Tuesday’s losses. There was no apparent reason for the market to suddenly “go positive” following a ruinous day that shook investor confidence around the world. The editors of the New York Times summarized the feelings of many market-watchers who were baffled by this odd recovery: 

“The torrent of bad news on housing is only worsening, with a report yesterday that new home sales for January had their steepest slide in 13 years...Manufacturing has already slipped into a recession, with activity contracting in two of the last three months. How is it then that investors took Mr. Bernanke’s words as a “buy” signal?”"

Full article by Mike Whitney at The Smirking Chimp.

16 February RUSSIA THREATENS TO QUIT ARMS TREATY

"Russia threatened on Thursday to pull out of a landmark nuclear arms control treaty unless the US backed away from plans to install its missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. Yury Baluyevsky, the Russian army chief of staff, said Moscow might unilaterally withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, which forced the US and the Soviet Union to ban nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km.

There was “convincing evidence” for leaving the agreement because “many countries are developing and perfecting medium-range rockets”, he said. But the general also explicitly linked Russia’s stance to the US’s plans to extend its missile defence into central Europe."

Full article at FT.com.

13 January 2007 BLUNDERING INTO SOMALIA YET AGAIN

"Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia under cover of the Christmas holiday was a blatant aggression that is likely to widen the arc of conflict across the dangerously turbulent Horn of Africa. It also marks the opening of a new front in Washington’s war against Islamic militants and reformers.

Claims by Ethiopia that Somalia, a nation without any real military forces, threatened its border were as fanciful as assertions by Washington and Addis Ababa that the so-called "transitional government" they had installed in the town of Baidoa represented anything more than its own well-paid members.

The US-backed and financed Ethiopian offensive was clearly designed to crush the first stable government strife-torn Somalia has had in 15 years of civil war and anarchy. The new Islamic regime, known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), recently managed to bring law and order to much of southern and central Somalia. In the north, a secessionist group has proclaimed something called independent "Puntland."

The Union of Islamic Courts ended Somalia’s long civil war by crushing local warlords who were being armed and financed by the CIA. The US claims the Islamic Courts is a second Taliban-style movement containing "terrorists" involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa who will turn Somalia into a hotbed of anti-American subversion. The UIC denies these allegations."

Full article by Eric Margolis at LewRockwell.com.

27 December ADULTS ABANDON FURTHER EDUCATION

"..when these new figures, showing a huge fall in the number of adults in further education were published this week, there was no outcry, and no expressions of regret from government.......Indeed, the new figures seemed to attract little government attention; they were quietly released, with no accompanying news release, on the Department for Education and Skill's website. 

They showed that the number of adults in FE, aged over 19, fell last year by 16.9%. That represents almost 600,000 fewer adults on courses in FE Colleges. There was a further fall of almost 10% in the numbers on Adult and Community Learning. That is some 85,000 fewer people taking the variety of day and evening classes run by local councils. 

Taken together that is a staggering total of close to 700,000 adults who are no longer on courses at sub-degree level...

..Yet, why is there no alarm in government over this decline in learning? The answer is that this is the direct (if not intended) outcome of a deliberate strategy to focus the adult learning budget on two priorities: 16 to 19 year-olds and economically useful qualifications at either "basic skills" level or Level 2 (the equivalent of GCSE)."

Full article by Mike Baker at BBC News.

6 November 92-YEAR-OLD TURKISH ARCHAEOLOGIST TO BE TRIED FOR SAYING HEAD SCARVES LINKED TO SEX RITES

"A 92-year-old retired archaeologist will stand trial in Turkey for claiming that Islamic-style head scarves date back more than 5,000 years — several millennia before the birth of Islam — and were worn by priestesses who initiated young men to sex. Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, an expert on the ancient Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia between the fourth and third millennia B.C., is the latest person to go on trial in Turkey for expressing opinions, despite intense European Union pressure on the country to expand such freedom as freedom of expression. Her trial is scheduled to start in Istanbul on Wednesday.

She joins dozens of other writers, journalists and academics who have been prosecuted, including this year's Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Elif Shafak. Charges of insulting Turkishness against Pamuk were dropped over a technicality earlier this year, and Shafak was acquitted."

Full article at USA Today.

25 October AUSTRALIAN TREASURER SEEKS ORDERLY WITHDRAWAL FROM U.S. DOLLAR

"TREASURER Peter Costello has called on East Asia’s central bankers to “telegraph” their intentions to diversify out of American investments and ensure an orderly adjustment.Central banks in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong have channelled immense foreign reserves into American government bonds, helping to prop up the US dollar and hold down American interest rates.

Mr Costello said “the strategy had changed” and Chinese central bankers were now looking for alternative investments. “Of course you can have an orderly adjustment,” he told reporters. “And what I would recommend is that these matters be telegraphed well in advance. I think we should begin preparing ourselves for it.” Mr Costello said the “re-emergence” of China as the world’s greatest economy “is not something to be feared”.

Full article by John Garnaut, reposted from Sydney Morning Herald, at Rebelwarez.

19 October WHO KILLED ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA?

A must-read for anyone who has any interest in what is going on in Russia, how the Western media report it, and which forces in Russia the West is allied with. Suggests that there is more diversity of opinion, at least on this issue, in major Russian media than in Western ones. 

Politkovskaya seems to have been little-known in Russia, but her unfortunate murder received massive coverage in the West, mostly suggesting that in some way Putin's government, or the climate it had created, was to blame. But there are other candidates. The Previous killing of a well-known media figure is popularly linked to one of the "oligarchs" whose business interests the West seems keen to foster.

Article by John Laughland (reprinted from Sanders Research with permission) at LewRockwell.com.

10 October THE EMERGING RUSSIAN GIANT PLAYS ITS CARDS STRATEGICALLY

"The September 2006 summit in Paris between Russia’s Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, underscored the re-emerging of Russia as a major global power. The new Russia is gaining in influence through a series of strategic moves revolving around its geopolitical assets in energy—most notably its oil and natural gas. It’s doing so by shrewdly taking advantage of the strategic follies and major political blunders of Washington. The new Russia also realizes that if it does not act decisively, it soon will be encircled and trumped by a military rival, USA, for which it has little defenses left. The battle, largely unspoken, is the highest stakes battle in world politics today. Iran and Syria are seen by Washington strategists as mere steps to this great Russian End Game..."

"Since the devastating setbacks two years ago from the US-sponsored ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, and then Ukraine, Russia has begun to play its strategic energy cards extremely carefully, from nuclear reactors in Iran to military sales to Venezuela and other Latin American states, to strategic market cooperation deals in natural gas with Algeria..."

"For obvious military and political reasons, Washington could not admit openly that its strategic focus, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, had been the dismemberment or de-construction of Russia, and gaining effective control of its huge oil and gas resources, the ‘ultimate prize.’ The Russian Bear still had formidable military means, however dilapidated, and she still had nuclear teeth. In the mid-1990’s Washington began a deliberate process of bringing one after the other former satellite Soviet state into not just the European Union, but into the Washington-dominated NATO. By 2004 Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia all had been admitted into NATO, and the Republic of Georgia was being groomed to join. This surprising spread of NATO, to the alarm of some in western Europe, as well as to Russia, had been part of the strategy advocated by Cheney’s friends at the Project for the New American Century, in their ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ report and even before."

Full article by F. William Engdahl at GlobalResearch.ca

4 October WHO BENEFITS FROM THE AFGHAN OPIUM TRADE?

"However, what distinguishes narcotics from legal commodity trade is that narcotics constitutes a major source of wealth formation not only for organized crime but also for the US intelligence apparatus, which increasingly constitutes a powerful actor in the spheres of finance and banking. This relationship has been documented by several studies including the writings of Alfred McCoy. (Drug Fallout: the CIA's Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

In other words, intelligence agencies, powerful business, drug traders and organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. A large share of this multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens launder large amounts of narco-dollars.

This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have "political friends in high places." Legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing line between "businesspeople" and criminals is blurred. In turn, the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions including the Military."

Full article by Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research.

4 October LETTER TO A GENERAL - STOP KILLING THE AFGHANS

".... the Taliban has the initiative....... NATO is helping the Taliban stage its comeback. NATO is botching the war in Afghanistan in ways remarkably similar to those the U.S. has employed in Iraq. It is conducting massive sweeps, bombing villages, and alienating locals. It may not be too late to turn it around; no one is better positioned to do so than yourself. But if you are to avoid presiding over one defeat while Pete Pace presides over another, you need to act along the following lines: 

1. Stop fighting the Pashtun. The war in Afghanistan is in part a civil war, and the Pashtun always win Afghan civil wars. NATO’s presence won’t change that outcome, although it may delay it. If NATO doesn’t want to end up on the losing side, it needs to make peace with the Pashtun, then if possible ally with the Pashtun. As NATO’s supreme commander, that ought to be your main strategic objective. 

2. Stop attacking the Taliban. Of course NATO forces must respond when attacked, but don’t look for fights. Every engagement with the Taliban, won or lost, moves you farther away from peace with the Pashtun. Drop the sweeps, "big pushes," etc. Stop talking about body counts; those bodies are almost all Pashtun."

Full articleby William S. Lind, entitled "Dear Jim", at LewRockwell.com.

4 October BOMBING PAKISTAN BACK TO THE STONE AGE

"During last week’s US media blitz to promote his new book, Musharraf claimed soon after 9/11, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the US would “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” if it did not immediately turn against its Afghan ally, Taliban, and allow the US to use military bases in Pakistan to invade Afghanistan.....Armitage denies threatening war on Pakistan. But a reader, Prof. John Yardley, reminded me that in my 2002 book, War at the Top of the World, I had indeed revealed the US threat to bomb Pakistan....."

"Last Wednesday, President George Bush hosted a tense dinner for Karzai and Musharraf, who detest one another. As the Afghan War goes increasingly badly for the western powers, Karzai keeps blaming Musharraf for allowing Taliban to operate inside Pakistan and launch cross-border attacks on Afghanistan. Musharraf fired back that Karzai was a figurehead who had no control of his country. Both accusations are true.Tribal politics lie at the heart of their dispute. The 30 million Pashtuns (or Pathans), the world’s largest tribal society, are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan by an artificial border, the Durand Line, drawn by divide-and-conquer British imperialists. "

Full article by Eric Margolis at LewRockwell.com.

2 October INSIDE BURMA'S REBEL ARMY: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST A REGIME PROPPED UP BY FOREIGN OIL

"When Zoya Phan was 13, she was happy. Every day on her way home from school, deep in the thick forest of Karen state in eastern Burma, she would scramble on her hands and knees up hillsides to pick mushrooms for her mother. Before the rains came that summer she chased scarlet butterflies through lush banana gardens and mango trees, the sweet smell of ripening rice heavy in the air. But her life would soon change beyond all recognition. In 1995, just days after the Karen people celebrated New Year, Phan watched the Burmese army open fire on her village. The massacre claimed the lives of most of the village and forced Phan and her family to flee and live from hand to mouth in the jungle. Months later Phan made it to a camp for internally displaced ethnic minority groups on the Thai-Burmese border. She was one of the lucky ones.

At around the same time, a trade delegation headed by the British ambassador to Burma was enjoying a banquet supper with the military junta in Rangoon. In 1995 British trade with Burma already stood at £9m, but while other Western governments were criticising the regime for its attacks on ethnic minorities, chiefly on the Karen, the British delegates were pressing for business."

Full article by Grace Lincoln and Evan Williams at The Independent.

22 September MORALES TAKES COCA CAMPAIGN TO U.N.

"Bolivian President Evo Morales is telling the world what he says it has been unwilling to acknowledge for the past half a century -- that coca is not the same as cocaine. "This is coca," he said, taking a leaf from his jacket pocket and displaying it to the world leaders who packed the United Nations General Assembly hall Wednesday. "This is not cocaine."

Defending the right of indigenous communities in his country to grow coca, he called for changes in international efforts to counter the global illicit drug problem, which mainly focus on the destruction of the crop instead of controlling the demand for narcotics....

"Coca does not harm human health," he told IPS, citing a study by Harvard University which he said concluded that coca leaf "is the best food in the world. They (researchers) not only recommend chewing it, but eating it." In the 1975 study, Harvard researchers noted that while an eight-ounce glass of milk has about 300 milligrammes of calcium, a 3.5-ounce coca leaf contains 1,540 milligrammes of calcium.The pharmacologically active ingredient of coca is the alkaloid cocaine, found in concentrations of about 0.2 percent in fresh leaves. In raw form, coca is a mild stimulant and appetite suppressant. Studies have found little evidence that habitual coca use leads to any of the harmful health effects associated with regular cocaine use."

Full article by Haider Rivzi at Inter Press Service News Agency.

21 September ACQUITTAL FOR TURKISH NOVELIST

"The bestselling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak was acquitted earlier today of the charges of "insulting Turkishness" brought against her under Article 301 of Turkish law. The charges were dropped at the prosecutor's request.

Shafak faced up to three years in jail over remarks made by a fictional character in her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, which referred to the massacre of Armenians in the first world war as genocide. Article 301 of the Turkish penal code criminalises the "public denigration" of Turkishness, the Turkish Republic, the Grand National Assembly, the government, judiciary, military and security services in terms so broad as to be applicable to a wide range of critical opinions. More than 60 writers have been charged under the law since its introduction last year."

Full article by Richard Lea at The Guardian.

22 August THE 'WAR PRESIDENT'S' LATEST FIASCO

"President George W. Bush likes to call himself "the war president" and strike martial poses against patriotic backdrops, a trick he learned from another president who never saw military action, Ronald Reagan. In spite of Iraq and other foreign policy misadventures, and failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, polls show that when it comes to national security many Americans still regard the Bush Administration with approval and trust. Their confidence is not well placed. To date, the "war president" was asleep on guard duty on 9/11, involved the US in four lost wars, and has stirred up a hornet’s nest of anti-American hatred around the globe."

Full article by Eric Margolis at LewRockwell.com.

2 August CHINA'S GROWING POLLUTION REACHES U.S.

"On a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Steven Cliff collects evidence of an industrial revolution taking place thousands of miles away. The tiny, airborne particles Cliff gathers at an air monitoring station just north of San Francisco drifted over the ocean from coal-fired power plants, smelters, dust storms and diesel trucks in China and other Asian countries.

Researchers say the environmental impact of China's breakneck economic growth is being felt well beyond its borders. They worry that as China consumes more fossil fuels to feed its energy-hungry economy, the U.S. could see a sharp increase in trans-Pacific pollution that could affect human health, worsen air quality and alter climate patterns."

Full article by Terence Chea at Yahoo! News.

1 August CHOLESTEROL, LIPITOR, AND BIG GOVERNMENT

"The US government, once upon a time, jumped on the panic train as regards cholesterol, thereby encouraging even more useless drugs for an already over-medicated America.....In 2005, Chris Masterjohn pointed out that it was Ancel Keys – an interventionist and front man for lifestyle nannyism – who, in 1953, presented an anti-cholesterol case that not only failed to demonstrate the surefire dangers of high cholesterol, but Keys even admitted to the fact that one’s diet had a minimal effect on atherosclerosis....

Dr. Paul J. Rosch, MD, President of The American Institute of Stress and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at New York Medical College (referenced in "Who’s Who in the World), has researched the effects of high stress on heart disease, and is one of the heroic doctors who is brave enough to go against the grain regarding the cholesterol hoax. He has often made the point that approximately half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels. At a 2003 conference in Arlington, Virginia, "Heart Disease in the 21st Century: Beyond the Lipid Hypothesis," Dr. Rosch noted that "anyone who questions cholesterol usually finds his funding cut off.""

Full article by Karen De Coster at LewRockwell.com.

1 August ITALY'S WATERGATE - ESPIONAGE, SECRECY, AND CORRUPTION: LESSONS FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

"When Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro issued arrest warrants for 22 CIA officers last November, for the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan, it seemed like a hollow gesture. Spataro claimed that American operatives had snatched the imam, who is known as Abu Omar, and transported him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. But there was no way the United States would extradite its spies, and it appeared that the Italian investigation of the murky practice of extraordinary rendition would go the way of similar cases in this country: nowhere.

But Spataro wasn't hampered by the sort of pervasive official secrecy that prevails in the United States, and his team turned up revealing details of the abduction. The more they dug, the more dirt they found. Before long, the investigation blossomed into a full-blown spy scandal, replete with domestic wiretapping and the mysterious death of one of the investigators. By early July, two of Italy's top spymasters were under arrest."

Full article by Patrick Radden Keefe at Slate.

22 June WORLD GRAIN STOCKS FALL TO 57 DAYS OF CONSUMPTION: GRAIN PRICES STARTING TO RISE

"This year’s world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand. As a result of these shortfalls, world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices. 

World carryover stocks of grain, the amount in the bin when the next harvest begins, are the most basic measure of food security. Whenever stocks drop below 60 days of consumption, prices begin to rise. It thus came as no surprise when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projected in its June 9 world crop report that this year’s wheat prices will be up by 14 percent and corn prices up by 22 percent over last year’s."

Full article by Lester R. Brown at Earth Policy Institute.

8 May UNDER MARGARET BECKETT, FARMERS HAVE BEEN THE VICTIMS OF INCOMPETENCE TO MATCH ANYTHING AT THE HOME OFFICE

"It's lambing time on the North York Moors, but the dry weather has left fields nibbled to the quick, so sheep farmers such as Mark Graham are having to fork out for feed. That's bad enough for a hill farmer at the best of times, eating into wafer-thin profit margins on their small flocks, but this spring it could be disastrous - thousands of farmers are waiting for government payments they are owed from 2005, which are now nearly five months late. Graham has just got the thick pile of application forms for this year; they are late, and he has just over two weeks to fill in the 30-odd pages, although it is his busiest time of year...."

"David Miliband will have a huge task in his new job at Defra to unravel a monumental mess that bears all the hallmarks of New Labour's style of government: over-centralisation, inflated expectations of IT, ruthless job cuts, overpaid senior executives and ballooning numbers of temporary staff."

Full article by Madeleine Bunting, titled "The Yorkshire moors is the place to learn about our new foreign secretary", at The Guardian.

21 April FACING DOWN IRAN

"Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:
contempt for the most basic international conventions;
long-reach extraterritoriality;
effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;
a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);
an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

Yet the Europeans remain in denial. Iran was supposedly the Middle Eastern state they could work with. And the chancellors and foreign ministers jetted in to court the mullahs so assiduously that they’re reluctant to give up on the strategy just because a relatively peripheral figure like the, er, head of state is sounding off about Armageddon."

Fascinating article by Mark Steyn on Iranian policy from the foundation of the Islamic Republic, and the West's response. Well worth reading, especially if you are into understanding the reality of world politics, and are not a right-wing nationalist, Christian supremacist, or racist, but are still very worried by the growing Islamic influence in the West. Full article at City Journal.

4 April IS IT MURDER OR ISN'T IT?

Is it murder to kill on behalf of the state? Article by Laurence M. Vance at LewRockwell.com, with reference to the war on Iraq, and the Jewish and Christian Bible's commandment which has been translated into English as "Thou shalt not kill".

28 March EVENING CLASSES TO DOUBLE CHARGES

"THE cost of evening classes is to double for more than two million people to help to fund job training for low-skilled workers, the Government admitted yesterday. Night classes in everything from flower arranging to foreign languages are expected to close. Leaders of further education colleges estimate that one million places will be lost overall. 

Ministers believe that night courses should not be the preserve of the middle classes keen on self-improvement. They consider that taxpayers’ money would be better spent improving the skills of adults and young people who have left school with few or no qualifications. However, fees for everyone else will rise sharply over the next four years. State subsidies will be cut from 73 per cent to 50 per cent of the cost of courses by 2010. Individuals or their employers will have to pay the other half."

Full article by Tony Halpin at The Times.

24 March FOOD, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS

"The other day, a prominent Canadian journalist paid me a visit to interview me for his book on building a sustainable future. At one point, I expounded on the closed-nutrient cycle of old-school organic farming, contrasting it with what writer Michael Pollan deemed the "industrial-organic" way. In the old-school organic style, which relies on animals, farm wastes are recycled into the soil, providing all the nutrients necessary for the next harvest. The industrial-organic farmer, by contrast, imports his or her soil fertility -- just like the conventional farmer. The difference is that the organic farmer is likely shipping in composted manure from far-flung places, while the conventional grower is hauling in a processed petroleum product.....

The journalist then asked me a question that stopped me short: "Do you think real organic farming could feed the world?" I stammered something like "I hope so," and had him jot down a couple of books to look up.....

To an extent, the problem is one of semantics, centering on the definition of "sustainable." To many green types, places like Whole Foods and Wild Oats teem with "sustainably produced" stuff -- everything from T-shirts to apples, chicken and eggs, even versions of Twizzlers and TV dinners. But the great bulk of it falls under the rubric of industrial-organic -- like the wares on offer at Wal-Mart, only a little less so, these goods depend on a culture of cheap and plentiful crude oil and labor. 

The cheap-oil problem has certainly gained traction among greens. Blogs devoted to "peak oil" abound; this very blog seems like one at times. Most of these discussions, though, devolve into sniping about biofuels and hybrids. It's important to wonder how we'd get around in an era of super-high oil prices. But I don't understand why more people aren't worried about what we'd eat."

Full article by Tom Philpott, plus comments, at Grist Magazine.

17 March WHY ALL THE FOREIGN BASES?

"On May 14, 2005 the Associated Press reported Bulgaria's announcement that it would provide three new military bases to the US. General James Jones, the top commander of US and NATO troops in Europe, said that he would propose to the US Congress "four or five Bulgarian military facilities for use by US forces." More recently, the US announced plans for new bases in Romania. Why does the US need new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania? According to Chalmers Johnson, in his book "The Sorrows of Empire," America already possesses more than 725 overseas bases..."

"Like Sparta, the US has de facto control over the foreign policy of its military alliance, NATO. And presumably, the US would not allow an objectionable form of government to take power in a key strategic ally. In fact, the US has sought to instigate or prevent regime change in many states it has wanted to control, whether strategic or non-strategic, allied or non-allied. Examples include Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Greece, Grenada, Guam, Guatemala, Haiti, Hawaii, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Philippines, Samoa, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Venezuela, and Vietnam, among others."

Good overview of the American Empire by Sam Baker. Full article at LewRockwell.com.

16 March MI5, CAMP DELTA, AND THE STORY THAT SHAMES BRITAIN

"Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna are among eight British residents who remain prisoners at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They are jailed because British officials rendered them into the hands of the CIA in Africa, a fact that may explain why the British government refuses to intercede on their behalf. Bisher and Jamil have been wrongfully imprisoned now for more than three years. This is the story of their betrayal by the British government and their appalling treatment at the hands of the CIA and the U.S. military."

Full article at The Independent.

15 March THE SECRET WAR AGAINST THE DEFENSELESS PEOPLE OF WEST PAPUA

Speaking first of East Timor, John Pilger writes; "... my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns were finishing off the occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering. 

And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province – stolen from its people, like East Timor – is one of the great secrets of our time.....

An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor."

Full article at John Pilger's website.

7 March BUSH, CHAVEZ AND HITLER

"U.S. officials become angry and indignant when someone compares the Bush administration’s policies to those of the Hitler regime. Even government officials at the local level get upset over the comparison, as reflected by the public schoolteacher who is under investigation for comparing Bush’s policies to those of Hitler in his classroom. Ironically, however, the anger and indignation felt by U.S. officials when someone compares Bush’s policies to those of Hitler does not stop U.S. officials from comparing foreign leaders to Hitler....

"Ironically, even as Rumsfeld calls Chavez “Hitler” for consolidating power, no one can deny that ever since 9/11, Bush has done everything he can to “consolidate power,” as evidenced by the USA PATRIOT Act, the unconstitutional assumption of power to declare war, the illegal attack and war of aggression on a country that had never attacked the United States, the illegal spying on Americans by recording their telephone conversations without a judicially issued warrant, the jailing and punishment of Americans without due process of law, illegal kidnapping and “rendition” of prisoners to foreign regimes for the purposes of torture, and of course the illegal torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder of detainees by U.S. forces."

Full article by Jacob G. Hornberger at LewRockwell.com

3 March AMERICA'S GLORIOUS EMPIRE OF DEBT

"Let us take a moment to stand back and gaze at America’s great Empire of Debt. It is the largest edifice of debt ever put up. It sustains the most magnificent world economy ever assembled. It brings more wealth to more people than any system ever before devised.......America’s empire of debt...stands not as a solid pyramid of trust, authority, and power relationships but as a rickety slum of delusion, fraud, and misapprehension."

Full article by Bill Bonner at LewRockwell.com.

2 March CANNABIS AND THE BRAIN: A USER'S GUIDE

Actually, this is a great article for non-users, especially if you believe cannabis is bad for you but have never actually looked at any of the scientific evidence. This is the position my dad took in the late 1960's. He was an intelligent man, but was totally unable (or unwilling?) to overcome the propaganda of moronic newpapers, or to distinguish between the effect of cannabis and other drugs. This was quite a formative experience for me; it played a big part in convincing me that much human behaviour is irrational, as are many political attitudes. I have never wished since then to support political parties which have similar attitudes that totally ignore the facts of the matter, which is one of many reasons why I have never supported the Labour Party. It is also why I get so frustrated that good people continue to expect any sort of radical reform from labour  - not just on drugs, but on any policy area.

Article by Paul Armentano at LewRockwell.com.

22 February STATELESS IN SOMALIA, AND LOVING IT

"Somalia is in the news again. Rival gangs are shooting each other, and why? The reason is always the same: the prospect that the weak-to-invisible transitional government in Mogadishu will become a real government with actual power.

The media invariably describe this prospect as a "hope." But it's a strange hope that is accompanied by violence and dread throughout the country. Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming." Full article by Yumi Kim at LewRockwell.com.

20 February STATE OF WAR: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

"James Risen is one of The New York Times’ major writers on intelligence matters and related subjects. His new book on such topics is State of War: The Secret History Of The CIA And The Bush Administration (Free Press, 2006)." Dean Lawrence R. Velvel reviews the book in some detail at LewRockwell.com. If you don't want all the detail at the start about whether the New York Times knew about the NSA spying on American civilians before the 2004 Presidential election (and thus influenced in Bush's favour the outcome by withholding publication of the story), scroll half-way down to the list of 12 numbered points.

An example; "9. As discussed here many times, but hardly ever mentioned in the media, Saddam’s regime "had planned for guerrilla war before the U.S. invasion by setting up secret weapons caches and stay-behind networks." Indeed, the planning for guerrilla war went so far that "just before the war, Iraqi intelligence agencies had purchased large numbers of garage door openers in Dubai, as crude but effective remote triggering devices for roadside bombs." (Pp. 136-137.) Plainly, as has been said here previously, guerrilla war was the surprise that Saddam said the Americans would get if they invaded."

20 February A HALF-DOZEN QUESTIONS ABOUT 9/11 THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO ASK

Who Is Osama? Where Did He Come From? How Did He Escape? What About Those Anthrax Attacks? Article by Werther at Counterpunch.

20 February CHURCHILL, HITLER, AND NEWT - GINGRICH AND THE PUSH FOR WAR ON IRAN

"You can always tell when the War Party wants a new war. They will invariably trot out the Argumentum ad Hitlerum. Before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had become "the Hitler of Arabia," though he had only conquered a sandbox half the size of Denmark. Milosevic then became the "Hitler of the Balkans," though he had lost Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia, was struggling to hold Bosnia and Kosovo, and had defeated no one. 

Comes now the new Hitler. "This is 1935, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we've seen," said Newt Gingrich to a startled editor at Human Events." Patrick J. Buchanan takes Gingrich's arguments apart, looks at the push for war on Iran, and concludes;

"Instead of whining about how they were misled into Iraq, why don't Democrats try to stop this new war before it starts? They can begin by introducing a resolution in Congress denying Bush authority to launch any preventive war on Iran, unless Congress first declares war on Iran. Isn't that what the Constitution says? 

Before we go to war, let's have a debate of whether we need to go to war.

Full article at LewRockwell.com.

15 February THE POLITICS OF FEAR (OR HOW TONY BLAIR MISLED US OVER THE WAR ON TERROR)

"The Government has persistently failed to tell the truth either to itself or to the British public about the terror threat in Britain. These failures of diagnosis have led to failures of response. An example is the Prime Minister's denial that there is a connection between the Iraq war and domestic terrorism. That denial is not merely false. It also inhibits the kind of deep understanding of the motives of Muslim terrorists which the Prime Minister presumably wants."

A must-read. Full article by Peter Oborne at The Independent.

14 February GREED OF THE HIGHEST ORDER AND THE WORST PRIVATISATION SINCE RAIL

Re the privatisation of the British government's defence research service, Qinetiq, last week, George Monbiot writes;

"So here we have a privatisation - the first full-scale privatisation Tony Blair's government has carried out - that has allowed a US investment company to walk off with hundreds of millions of pounds of free money, much of which will be tax exempt. It has been assisted by 25 years of guaranteed income from the government and the possible shedding of liabilities. It is overseen by a man who first came to public notice as a result of a defence procurement deal surrounded by controversy, and who now turns up as minister for defence procurement. Does anyone agree that this is a "good model for future privatisations"?

Full article at The Guardian.

8 February IT'S CAPITALISM OR A HABITABLE PLANET - YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH 

"Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change..."

"Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis."

"Solutions need to come from people themselves. But once set up, local autonomous groups need to be supported by technology transfers from state to community level. Otherwise it's too expensive to get solar panels on your roof, let alone set up a local energy grid."

Full article by Robert Newman (originally published 2 February, 2006) at The Guardian. 

8 February 2008 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - CHOOSE YOUR FOREIGN POLICY POISON

"Right now, the 2008 election shapes up like this. The Republican frontrunners are Senator John McCain (Az.) and Senator George Allen (Va.). McCain is ahead of Allen. Giuliani is running third, quite far back.

Hillary Clinton is the Democratic favorite with Governor Mark Warner (Va.) running a distant second. The Republicans are slight favorites to retain the White House. All these rankings are from Tradesports contracts.

Senators McCain and Clinton are competing intensely in an Iran War tournament. First prize goes to whoever stakes out the most pro-war position. Both are hawks. Both are prepared to bomb Iran. Choose your war crimes poison, Republican or Democratic.

In a speech that could have been written and proofread by AIPAC, Clinton loudly clanged all the pro-Israel and anti-Iran bells: "We cannot and should not – must not – permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons." McCain ratcheted up the Iranian confrontation to the most serious since the Cold War and declared that "a nuclear capability in Iran is unacceptable." Is Iran a child in need of correction? Choose your hectoring poison, red or blue."

Full article by Michael S. Rozeff at LewRockwell.com.

6 February ENERGY EFFICIENCY "ONLY WAY" TO CURB SPIRALLING FUEL BILLS

News of an expected increase in prices by British Gas of up to 25% has today been condemned as outrageous by the Green Party. Keith Taylor, Green Party Principal Speaker, commented: "This will be the largest price rise to be forced through by an energy supplier since the market was deregulated at the end of the 1990s, and will be the fourth announced by British Gas in three years. 

"This will inevitably consign millions more to fuel poverty - latest estimates suggest there are 2m pensioner homes without insulation, while Help the Aged estimates that last winter, 28,700 older people in England and Wales died of preventable, cold-related illnesses. How will the most vulnerable to colder weather be able to cope with these new hikes?

"Centrica - parent company to British Gas - claims extortionate costs are a result of the rise in the price of wholesale gas, forcing gas companies to place the burden on customers. But in 2004, they announced an 83% increase in operating profit - to £243 million, in their energy business. The figures don't add up. Clearly, the only way for consumers to curb spiralling fuel bills in the face of an ever increasing drive for profits is to become more energy efficient.

"Over a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions released into the air come from the energy used to run our homes, but a third of the cost of heating our homes and businesses is immediately wasted through energy loss. Simple measures such as loft or cavity wall insulation and switching off machines on standby provide immediate benefits both to the environment as well as our wallets. In the face of supply shortages and resultant price increases, and the loss of UK control of our energy costs due to reliance on foreign supplies, a responsible government would embark on massive investment of homeland energy production from clean, renewable sources."

2 February SMALLER FIRMS MAY FACE POLLUTION LIMITS

Green Party Sustainable Development Spokesperson John Whitelegg today cautiously welcomed plans that will mean small and medium-sized firms in the UK may face pollution limits. Companies would be allocated a ration of permits to emit CO2. If they overshoot their ration, the firms would have to buy extra permits.

He said: "We have all seen office blocks at night, with lights and computers left on, and been in shops in the summer, with air conditioning on full blast and the doors open. There is no incentive for smaller businesses to reduce their energy use other than the price of electricity, and this is lower than is needed to reflect the environmental cost.

"Becoming more energy efficient and so reducing carbon emissions is a vital first step towards really tackling climate change. Reducing energy usage usually proves a simple and cost effective procedure. However, any scheme that involves trading would have to operate under a 'cap and trade' principle, whereby there would be limits as to how many permits a business could buy. Limits would also have to decrease annually, to ensure that the scheme has a real impact on emissions levels."

23 January NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN WITH IRAN

"In a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black, the US and Israel – both nuclear powers – accuse Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They offer no confirming proof of this charge, just more so-called leaks from "high-level administration sources" in the US accusing Iran of working on a nuclear delivery system. We saw precisely the same pattern in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Tehran accuses the west of nuclear apartheid and hypocrisy, citing the Bush Administration’s recent pact to provide fuel and technology to India’s nuclear programs, which Washington formerly condemned. India has an estimated 100 nuclear weapons and is building land and sea-launched missiles that can strike the continental United States. Only Muslim nations (Pakistan excepted since it’s a reliable US ally), it seems, are not to be allowed nuclear weapons....

Note: Iran has not violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which nuclear-armed Israel, India, North Korea and Pakistan never even signed). So Iran may be punished for agreeing to international inspection of nuclear facilities while those nations that refused to cooperate with efforts to limit nuclear weapons are being studiously ignored. In fact, the head of the UN nuclear agency was recently in Israel and failed to say anything about its secret nuclear arsenal, estimated at 200 nuclear warheads."

Full article by Eric Margolis at LewRockwell.com.

23 January IRAN'S BOMB

"There's been a lot of talk recently about Israel and/or the United States bombing the nuclear facilities in Iran. I wouldn't worry about that. I believe they are both bluffing.

In the first place, just the talk has kicked up the price of oil. In the second place, there is no proof that Iran really wants to develop nuclear weapons. So far, what the Iranians have done and propose to do are legal. They have a reasonable explanation for why they want to develop nuclear power. Oil is their biggest and most valuable export. The less they use for domestic purposes, the more they will have to export.

On the other hand, they are surrounded by nuclear powers – Israel, Russia, Pakistan, India and the U.S. (through its heavy presence in the Persian Gulf and Iraq). So maybe they do want to develop a nuclear bomb. Personally, I don't care if they do. Having lived most of my life with 30,000 nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them in the Soviet Union, I'm not going to worry about the Iranians having six or seven."

Full article by Charley Reese at LewRockwell.com.

19 January EVIDENCE OF A STOLEN ELECTION

Review by Paul Craig Roberts of Mark Crispin Miller’s new book, "Fooled Again", documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election.

"The non-partisan US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in response to congressional request investigated a number of complaints regarding the electronic voting machines. 

Here are some of the problems noted in the GAO’s September 2005 report:
Some voting machines did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.
It was possible to alter the machines so that a ballot cast for one candidate would be recorded for another.
Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.
Access was easily compromised and did not require a widespread conspiracy. A small handful of people is sufficient to steal an election.

Curiously, the media has shown no interest in the GAO report. In my opinion, a free press has proven to be inconsistent with the recently permitted highly concentrated corporate ownership of the US media. The electronic voting machines leave virtually no paper trail and their use involves private potentially partisan corporations tabulating the votes with proprietary software that is not transparent."

Full article at LewRockwell.com.

2005

22 December BOLIVIA ELECTS RADICAL PRESIDENT

"Morales 'certain of Bolivia win' - Bolivian socialist leader Evo Morales has won enough votes in the country's presidential election to be installed as leader, electoral officials say......Mr. Morales' win has raised eyebrows in the US, after he expressed his admiration for the Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He has also pledged to fight to remove the coca plant from the United Nations list of poisonous plants, and stressed his keenness to increase state control over Bolivia's lucrative natural gas industry."

Full Article at BBC News.

19 December  ‘EU AND US FAIL WORLD’S POOR AT WTO SUMMIT’ - MEP

THE European Union has betrayed the world’s poor by failing to make serious progress towards the promised ‘development round’ at the World Trade Organisation’s ministerial summit in Hong Kong, according to a member of the European Parliament’s official delegation to the talks.

Green Party MEP (Member of European Parliament) Caroline Lucas said the summit had prioritised opening markets – especially in services – to international competition and failed to put development at its heart. Developing countries were placed under enormous pressure by the EU and US to accept more and freer trade but without ending the export subsidies responsible for keeping millions of the world’s poor in abject poverty.

She said: “The deal emerging from the WTO talks falls well short of even the most pessimistic interpretations of what’s needed for a ‘development round’. The EU and US had promised to deliver a package of world trade rules which would benefit the developed world: but the best they seem to have managed is a non-binding commitment to end farm export subsidies in almost a decade’s time – too late for millions of the world’s poor – and a so-called ‘development package’ based on little more than empty promises and previous commitments.

“The world’s poorest have been denied a deal which delivers on development – and the rich North should be ashamed of itself for prioritising forcing open developing nations’ service sectors against their will over keeping the promises they made in Doha to make progress towards a ‘development round’. This behaviour is more reminiscent of the mercantilist bickering of the last century than of the 21st Century multilateralism needed to advance sustainable development and social justice.”

15 November THE US USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ - AND THEN LIED ABOUT IT

Although it was clear from internet sources many months ago that the US had used napalm, or a similar substance, in Iraq, there was no media fuss - appalling! Now it seems there is a push to give this the publicity it deserves. The US has also used white phosphorus. Article by George Monbiot at The Guardian.

2 November CLIMATE CHANGE: 10 WAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD

"Today (Nov. 1st), Tony Blair will address energy ministers from around the world on tackling climate change. But he is failing to meet his own targets, with British carbon emissions on the rise again. There are, though, measures he could adopt..."

E.g. "DECENTRALISE THE ENERGY SUPPLY SYSTEM. Do away with the vast power stations serving the national grid: think microgeneration. Give every city, every town, every village, its own power station, fitted with a combined heat and power (CHP) system, which cuts CO2." Full article at The Independent.

26 October TASK FORCE URGES £20M GRANTS FOR GREEN FUEL BOILERS

"Boilers that burn wood, straw and sewage sludge instead of coal, oil and gas could reduce Britain's carbon dioxide emissions by 3m tonnes a year, experts said yesterday. The government's biomass taskforce criticised ministers' approach to the technology and, in a new report, urged them to release up to £20m a year as grants to help schools, hospitals, local authorities and companies pay for boilers and combined heat and power plants that run on green fuels".

Full article by David Adam at The Guardian.

29 September KATRINA - ARMED DOLPHINS TRAINED BY US MILITARY MAY HAVE ESCAPED

"It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing."

Full article by Mark Townsend Houston at The Observer.

22 September 'GET OFF THE FUCKING FREEWAY': THE SINKING STATE LOOTS ITS OWN SURVIVORS

Two paramedics stranded in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina give their account of self-organisation and abandonment in the disaster zone. Written (I think) on Sep. 12, they finally got out on Sept. 10.

They were prevented from leaving on foot over one bridge - "As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move."

They had food and water confiscated by the authorities. "This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost."

Full article by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky at MetaMute.

13 September GREENS SAY BROWN DANGEROUSLY SHORT-SIGHTED OVER OIL PROBLEMS

The Green Party today appealed to the government to show real leadership and foresight in developing more sustainable transport systems for the twenty-first century.

Green Party Principal Speaker Keith Taylor said: "The reality is that oil is a finite resource. As it depletes, and demand grows, it will increase in price, and that is what we are witnessing, prompted by Hurricane Katrina's effects on US supplies. Gordon Brown has said that global issues need global solutions - but these solutions must also be sustainable. With the growing industrialisation of China and India, the situation is only going to get worse. To ask that Opec increase oil production by 500,000 extra barrels a day, as he has done, is dangerously short sighted."

"A responsible government would be planning now for when oil is even more expensive and in short supply. Industry analysts predict crude oil will double from its present price within the next few years. We're seeing the upset petrol pump price rises of a few pence per litre can cause, there is a real potential for huge civil disruption when peak oil predictions come true.

"Cutting the petrol tax is not the answer to the problem. We need to dramatically reduce the oil dependency of our economy - which makes us vulnerable to periodic shocks and disruption such as this, rather than continue to massively subsidise motorists. Official statistics show that between 1987 and 2000, although petrol and oil prices had increased by 45%, and tax and insurance payments by over 40%, the total costs of motoring in real terms had risen by only 5.6-7.2%. [2] The same figures also reveal that bus and coach fares increased by 18%, and rail fares by 21%, in real terms. The Green Party believes this is patently unsustainable and irresponsible.

"Reducing the tax on bio fuels would help stimulate the industry - encouraging drivers to change the types of vehicle they buy and provide more fuel security. It would also help reduce climate change gas emissions and provide a short-term price relief. In the longer term, for the government not to take immediate decisive and positive action now is a betrayal of this and future generations. We cannot afford to wait until petrol stations run out of fuel to act, or the floods caused by global warming are at our door - because that will be too late.

"We must develop alternative and sustainable transport solutions now. This means improving public transport, taking back into public control the rail network, and encouraging the development of low-carbon emitting transport systems. This is the fourth fuel crisis in as many decades - how many do we need to suffer for the government to wake up?"

26 August FOOTBALL FANS ARE IDIOTS

"Football is pricier, more uncompetitive and less atmospheric than ever. So why do supporters still lap it up, asks a bemused Sean Ingle" at The Guardian. Good article as far as it goes, but I had hoped the title promised a more general critique of the idiocy of spending so much of your life concerned about football!

25 July IRAN SITS PRETTY IN WORLD'S HOTTEST REGION

"Despite the best efforts of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to make Iran an international pariah, the Islamic Republic keeps wracking up one diplomatic victory after another. One month after the surprise election victory of hardline President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran finds itself in a substantially stronger position to resist the U.S. campaign to isolate it as part of a strategy of "regime change." 

Last weekend's three-day visit by U.S.-backed Iraqi President Ibrahim Jaafari to Tehran, where he was warmly received by the regime's top religious and government officials, was only the latest, albeit the most spectacular, of a series of events that underlines Iran's growing leverage." 

Full article by Jim Lobe at LewRockwell.com.

24 July THE END OF OIL - CONFERENCE ON PEAK OIL, FOOD AND THE ECONOMY, LONDON, 11TH OCTOBER 2005

A major conference examining the peak oil problem & its impact on climate change, the world's food supply & the world economy. Speakers include Michael Meacher MP, Tim Lang & Andrew Simms (of NEF), chaired by Dr Ian Gibson MP. The conference is organised by East Anglia Food Link, CRed, Sustain and PowerSwitch.

"THE PROBLEM; The world’s oil supply is running out.

Most analysts agree that once we pass the half-way point in the world’s oil reserves, production will begin to drop off as the remaining reserves are more difficult to extract. Some believe that point will come in the next 12 months, others think we have 10 years or more left. But either way, we need to prepare now by reducing our dependency on this finite resource. Oil and gas supply 85% of the energy used in the UK. By comparison, nuclear supplies 4% and renewables 1%. Can nuclear be expanded by a factor of 20, or renewables by a factor of 85? Will coal fill the gap, and at what cost to global warming? Do we have enough coal left to expand its use 12 times over?

We rely on energy to produce, process and transport food. As energy becomes more expensive, will our food system revert to local production and organic methods? Can the world continue to feed itself at all without cheap energy? What steps should we be taking right now to avert future hunger?"

Full details at East Anglia Food Link.

20 July POST-SOVIET LESSONS FOR A POST-AMERICAN CENTURY

"A decade and a half ago the world went from bipolar to unipolar, because one of the poles fell apart: The S.U. is no more. The other pole – symmetrically named the U.S. – has not fallen apart – yet, but there are ominous rumblings on the horizon. The collapse of the United States seems about as unlikely now as the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed in 1985. The experience of the first collapse may be instructive to those who wish to survive the second....

...The U.S. is desperately dependent on the availability of cheap, plentiful oil and natural gas, and addicted to economic growth. Once oil and gas become expensive (as they already have) and in ever-shorter supply (a matter of one or two years at most), economic growth will stop, and the U.S. economy will collapse."  Article by Dmitry Orlov at From The Wilderness (posted 01.06.05).

19 July REFORMERS AND HARDLINERS - WHAT DO IRAN, VENEZUELA AND BELARUS HAVE IN COMMON?

Article by Neil Clarke at The Guardian. Contrasts establishment media descriptions of the leaders of these three countries as "hardliners" with the description of aggressive privatisers, e.g. the leaders of Bulgaria and Hungary, as "centrist reformers". He concludes that "It is for standing up for the interests of their own people that these three men are labelled "hardliners". For those genuinely concerned with social justice, derailing the US behemoth and creating a world in which people come before profits, the more "hardliners" - and the less "moderates" and "reformers" - that are elected to power, the better."

15 July FLUORIDE FOLLIES

"Doctors and public health officials did not think sodium fluoride, used commercially as a rat and bug poison, fungicide, and wood preservative, should be put in public water. The Journal of the American Dental Association said (in 1936), "Fluoride at the 1 ppm [part per million] concentration is as toxic as arsenic and lead… There is an increasing volume of evidence of the injurious effects of fluorine, especially the chronic intoxication resulting from the ingestion of minute amounts of fluorine over long periods of time."

Good article by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD, at LewRockwell.com on how fluoride first came to be put into public water supplies - a story involving a large aluminium company and Manhattan Project's development of the atomic bomb! Also points out the lack of reliable evidence for its benefits and safety.

13 July GLASGOW'S DIET WAS HEALTHIER IN 1405

"Glaswegians in 1405 had a better diet than the citizens of 2005, eating their "five-a-day" 600 years ahead of its time. Even their light beer was healthier than sugar-laden fizzy concoctions that are today's favourite, according to new archaeological evidence. It reveals a diet of porridge and small amounts of pork and fish made medieval mealtime more nutritious than a visit to the chippy, the pizza parlour or the ubiquitous American fast food joints." Full article at The Scotsman.

4 June WHY OUR FOOD IS SO DEPENDENT ON OIL

Article by Norman Church. Full article at From The Wilderness (posted April 2nd, 2005).

"Not only is the contemporary food system inherently unsustainable, increasingly, it is damaging the environment.

The systems that produce the world's food supply are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides, and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging. In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads. The industrial food supply system is one of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels and one of the greatest producers of greenhouse gases."

"Just how energy inefficient the food system is can be seen in the crazy case of the Swedish tomato ketchup. Researchers at the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology analysed the production of tomato ketchup (2). The study considered the production of inputs to agriculture, tomato cultivation and conversion to tomato paste (in Italy), the processing and packaging of the paste and other ingredients into tomato ketchup in Sweden and the retail and storage of the final product. All this involved more than 52 transport and process stages.

The aseptic bags used to package the tomato paste were produced in the Netherlands and transported to Italy to be filled, placed in steel barrels, and then moved to Sweden. The five layered, red bottles were either produced in the UK or Sweden with materials form Japan, Italy, Belgium, the USA and Denmark. The polypropylene (PP) screw-cap of the bottle and plug, made from low density polyethylene (LDPE), was produced in Denmark and transported to Sweden. Additionally, LDPE shrink-film and corrugated cardboard were used to distribute the final product. Labels, glue and ink were not included in the analysis."

3 June U.S., RUSSIA STILL FACE MUTUAL DESTRUCTION THREAT

Interview by Martin Sieff with Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 and is the president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute based in Washington.

"The United States and the world came far closer to total nuclear catastrophe in 1995 than anyone seems to remember or realize, even though it was documented and reported in The New York Times. Norway launched a missile near a U.S. Trident submarine deployment. The Kremlin had been notified in advance that the missile would be fired, but just forgot the warning. The Russian radar picked up the Norwegian launch and concluded that they were under attack from a U.S. strategic nuclear missile submarine.

For the first time in history, Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the "football," the suitcase containing the Russian nuclear launch codes, and he had three minutes to decide whether to authorize an all-out Russian nuclear response. Only 10 seconds before the three minutes ran out, the Norwegian missile veered off course and this was reported to Yeltsin. There had even been a general at his elbow urging a full retaliatory strike. America was just 10 seconds from annihilation. This story was reported on the back page of the New York Times when it should have been on the front page."

Full article at From The Wilderness (reposted from World Peace Herald 18.05.05).

6 April DRUGS, BASES AND JAILS

What has happened since the Americans invaded Afghanistan?

"The country now qualifies, according to the Human Development Index in the UN's Human Development Report 2004, as the sixth worst off country on Earth.... The power of the new, democratically elected government of Hamid Karzai extends only weakly beyond the outskirts of Kabul. Large swathes of Afghanistan are still ruled by warlords and drug lords, or in some cases undoubtedly warlord/drug lords; and while the Taliban was largely swept away, armed militias dominate much of the country as they did after the Soviet withdrawal back in 1989. In addition, a low-level guerrilla war is still being run by elements of the former Taliban regime for which, in areas of the South, there is a growing "nostalgia." Women, outside a few cities, seem hardly better off than they were under the Taliban..."

"...For our Afghan bases to make much sense, you have to consider as well, those fourteen (or so) permanent bases in Iraq, our many other Middle Eastern bases, our full-scale access to three or more Pakistani military bases, our penetration of the once off-limits former SSRs of Central Asia, including the use of an air base in Uzbekistan and the setting up of a base for up to 3,000 U.S. troops at Manas in impoverished Kyrgyzstan (where "the Tulip Revolution" has just ejected a corrupt pro-Russian regime). In fact, you have to see that from Camp Bondsteel in the former Yugoslavia to the Manas base at the edge of China, the United States now effectively garrisons most of the heartland energy regions of the planet..."

Full article by Tom Engelhardt at LewRockwell.com.

17 March DO HUMANS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING?

Although I have a generally Green leaning in politics, I have occasionally wondered if global warming might be necessary to prevent the next Ice Age. But I have not doubted that the warming is taking place, or that it is caused by greenhouse gases, and I certainly have not trusted the American business establishment and their political front-men when they have claimed that the science is dodgy. Neither have I properly researched the science.

Donald W. Miller Jr.'s article, titled "Toro! Toro! Michael