But that Naso was by him banished in his old age, for the wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of state over some secret cause: and besides, the books were neither banished nor called in. From hence we shall meet with little else but tyranny in the Roman empire, that we may not marvel, if not so often bad, as good books were silenced. I shall therefore deem to have been large enough in producing what among the ancients was punishable to write, save only which, all other arguments were free to treat on.

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.

Ronald Reagan 28.Jan.86
American Rhetoric

It can't be said enough that this disaster was the direct result of pressure by Reagan's "handlers", the people in charge of his image and presence in the virtual world of televised reality. They wanted the launch on the day of his State of The Union Address. It wasn't ready. They pushed the launch forward, past safety and with no regard for the danger to the crew. This is common knowledge at NASA.
And that was 20 years ago. The power and seeming necessity of these behind-the-scenes image-manipulators is now more real and constant than the postures and sound-bites of the politicians themselves. It's completely conceivable and plausible to have a candidate for public office who doesn't exist at all except as the focus of the public's unquestioning attention. A frame to hang the goads and promises of unseen power on, and a target to misdirect the outrage and accusations of the opposition toward.
People revered Reagan the way they admire Schwarzenegger, for the roles he played and the way he looks on camera. It has nothing to do with either one of them as actual men, even less to do with their actions as leaders, except in moments like these - Reagan embodying the image of the father, calming the frightened child.
It's like those orchids that develop stamens that look and smell like female bees.

What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam

At last a note of contrition, but not from Kerry. Wasser describes to Brinkley how he saw that he'd killed an old man leading a water buffalo.

"I'm haunted by that old man's face. He was just doing his daily farming, hurting nobody. He got hit in the chest with an M-60 machinegun round. It may have been Christmas Eve, but I was real somber after that... to see the old man blown away sticks with you."

It turned out that Kerry's boat had shot up one of the few "friendly" villages, with a garrison of South Vietnamese ARV soldiers, two of whom were wounded.
Contrast Wasser's sad reflections with Kerry's self-righteous account in his diary of such salvoes, often aimed into Cambodian territory.

"On occasion we had shot towards the border when provoked by sniper or ambush, but without fail this led to a formal reprimand by the Cambodian government and accusations of civilian slaughters and random killings by American 'aggressors'. I have no doubt that on occasion some innocents were hit by bullets that were aimed in self-defense at the enemy, but of all the cases in Vietnam that could be labeled massacres, this was certainly the most spurious."

It's very striking how we never find, in any of Kerry's diaries or letters, the slightest expression of contrition or remorse--and Brinkley would surely have cited them had Kerry ever written such words. Nor did Kerry, in his later career as a self-promoting star of the antiwar movement, ever go beyond generalized verbiage about accidents of war, even as many vets were baring their souls about the horrors they had perpetrated. . .
The first time Kerry took Hollywood star Dana Delany to his home in the eighties she says his big move was showing her video clips taken of him in the Navy when he was in Vietnam. She never went out with him again. . .

Cockburn/Sinclair Counterpunch 29.Jul.04
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link UNDERNEWS

The family of a Lebanese cleric who went missing in Libya 26 years ago is trying to sue Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi and 17 other Libyan officials in the Lebanese courts, judicial officials said Wednesday.
The move is expected to worsen the poor relations between the two countries. Libya closed its embassy in Beirut last year, claiming it was insulted by Lebanese pressure to reveal the fate of Imam Moussa Al Sadr, the spiritual leader of Lebanon's Shiite Muslim community, who disappeared with two assistants, Sheikh Mohammed Yacoub and Abbas Badreddine, on a trip to Libya in 1978. Sadr's son, Sadreddine, and Yacoub's wife, Imtithal Suleiman, and Badreddine's wife, Zahra Yazbek, filed their complaint with Lebanon's Prosecutor-General Adnan Addoum, the officials said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

Jordan Times July 30-31, 2004

The Rise of Global Resistance

The tens of millions of war-protesters who blossomed on the world's Main Streets like belated spring flowers, days before the war on Iraq, did not look alike, speak the same language, belong to the same culture or religion, read the same papers, watch the same TV news or hold the same political thought. But, they were all motivated by a far grander and more noble cause than mere opposition to yet another war on a battered nation of the South: they shared the ideal of resisting empire.
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There is opportunity in the midst of the bleakest of disasters, as capitalist entrepreneurs have always held, albeit a different type of opportunity than the profit-obsessed one they've often eyed. With the United States' shocking and awful projection of the closest human approximation to absolute power to date, there is an equal but opposite global force of deep resentment, revulsion, dissidence and resistance that is fast developing.
And for the first time in decades, there is no simple dichotomy to conveniently divide the world into.
If the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the decisive beginning of the end of the East-West opposition, the illegal, immoral and criminal war on Iraq, waged by the new Rome of our time, might well announce the baptism of a new world community opposed to empire, any empire, and based on the precepts of evolving international law, human rights and the common principles of universal morality that are emerging.

Omar Barghouti
Electronic Iraq 29.Jul.04

to make America stronger at home and respected in the world

I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

Here is the reality: That won't happen until we have a president who restores America's respect and leadership so we don't have to go it alone in the world.

And we need to rebuild our alliances so we can get the terrorists before they get us.

I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president.

Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response.

I will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security.

And I will build a stronger military.

From the text of Sen. John F. Kerry's remarks to the Democratic National Convention.

How Strong Do We Look Now?

Dick Cheney was doing some counter-programming to the Democratic National Convention by speaking on the West Coast at Camp Pendleton.

He said, "Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness."

This statement is half right and half wrong. Some terrorist attacks are caused by the use of strength. For instance, the Shi'ites of southern Lebanon had positive feelings toward Israel before 1982. They were not very politically mobilized. Then the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the South. They killed some 18,000 persons, 9,000 of them estimated to be innocent civilians. The Shi'ites of the South gradually turned against them and started hitting them to get them back out of their country. They formed Hizbullah and ultimately shelled Israel itself and engaged in terrorism in Europe and Argentina. So, Hizbullah terrorist attacks were certainly caused by Sharon's use of "strength."
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The question is whether the quagmire in Iraq makes the U.S. look weak. The answer is yes. Therefore, by Cheney's own reasoning, it is a mistake that opens us to further attacks.

Reuters reports, "Cheney said Americans were safer and he stood by prewar characterizations of Iraq as a threat despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and new warnings by Cheney and other administration officials that another major terrorist attack may be coming."

Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Period. Let me repeat the statistics as of the late 1990s:

U.S. population: 295 million
Iraq population: 24 million

U.S. per capita annual income: $37,600
Iraq per capita annual income: $700

U.S. nuclear warheads: 10,455
Iraq nuclear warheads: 0

Juan Cole
AntiWar.com
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Informed Comment
Juan Cole

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is dying

According to the British newspaper Daily Mirror, with reference to the attorneys of former Iraqi leader, Hussein has had a heart attack. Arab press does not provide 100% accurate diagnosis; however, they also claim that Saddam Hussein is in critical condition. According to the Internet site "Akhbar Al-Iraq", ex-president was administered to ER in critical condition yesterday, where he later experienced clinical death. Today, the information has been refuted by the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hamid Al-Bayati.

Pravda 29.Jul.04

no confirmation as yet

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The same techniques were used to create a climate of acceptance for the removal of Howard Dean from the Democratic primaries. They run these subtle scams and cons, and because people grow up with the media, it's very difficult to step away from it and see. It's like turning your back on your grandmother.
This is a visual culture now. Linking the approved candidate with positive imagery is middle school technology. But it works, and most Americans are no more alert than a dull middle schooler these days. People are frightened, seeking refuge, wanting simple solutions and easy answers, and a reassuring voice. Nothing more reassuring than the groundless confidence of the all-seeing Presence. The familiar spirit that unites us all. These techniques were used to elect Bush, they'll be used to elect Kerry. After that they won't be necessary anymore.
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The idea that men and women are not fundamentally the same, except in the neutered kennels of the modern world where nothing physical matters, only the illusion, the image, isn't really controversial. It's obvious. A woman with huge plastic tits will not be a better nursemaid for an infant than a woman with relatively small natural tits, but in this depraved world the larger tits are more socially valuable. Those same values make men and women equivalent. And those same values legitimize profane intrusion into the living heart of what we are. It's Satanic. The Pope's right about that. The story makes it sound like he's attacking feminism itself, but he didn't write the story. Someone very much like Tony Levene did. Someone with an agenda that isn't laid out here, that's advanced by two forces of human liberation, the militant church and militant feminists, being tricked into attacking each other.
I'm not saying the Pope's right, I'm saying the owners and operators of the media want Kerry elected and the Pope is an obstacle to that.
We're like Helen Keller now, all of us. Groping toward some epiphany that hasn't happened yet.

We're enslaving our children, or worse, allowing them to be enslaved. Worse because if it's us, we can let them go when we come to our senses and stop cowering from the truth, but when we allow them to be enslaved we'll have to fight, and most of us are unprepared for that.

This is a simple and easily understood part of that enslavement:

...we're taxing our children big-time; that's what the huge deficit is. We're ignoring major environmental catastrophes on the horizon. And the take-home pay of the American worker is the smallest share of the national economy since 1929, which indicates that economic growth is now disconnected from the economic well being of the majority of American workers.

Ralph Nader
Q&A Brian Shott
Pacific News Service
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link KWSnet

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

African Americans represent 12.7% of the US population, 15% of US drug users (72% of all users are white), 36.8% of those arrested for a drug-related crime, 48.2% ofAmerican adults in state, and federal prisons and local jails and 42.5% of prisoners under sentence of death.
African American women (with an incarceration rate of 205 per 100,000) are more than three times as likely as Latinas (60 per 100,000) and six times more likely than white women (34 per 100,000) to face imprisonment.
The United States imprisons African American men at a rate four times greater than the rate of incarceration for Black men in South Africa.
In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses went into effect, the average sentence for an African American convicted of a drug-related crime involving crack was 11% higher than for whites. In 1990, four years after the implementation of harsher federal drug laws, the average increased to 49%.
Due to felony convictions, 1.46 million African American men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote.
One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 live under some form of correctional supervision or control.
African American children (7.0%) were nearly nine times more likely to have an incarcerated parent in prison than white children (0.8%).

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
That is the true genius of America - a faith in the simple dreams of its people. The insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm.

About 43 percent of women prisoners in California state facilities are drug offenders. The majority of these are single mothers, most of whom are expected to resume caring for their children at the end of their sentences. Withholding contact for a year is likely to make that difficult and crucial reunion even more challenging.

But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us?

I thought of more than 900 servicemen and women - sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who will not be returning to their home towns. I thought of families I had met who were struggling to get by without a loved one's full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or with nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were reservists.

Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
Min 11336 Max 13305

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

After a coup d��tat forced President Jacobo Arbenz from office in 1954, military governments ruled Guatemala for over three decades. During this time, the country�s Native American majority (consisting of 60 percent of the population) was subjected to acts of terrorism, displaced from its land and, in about 140,000 instances, murdered.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that's what this election is about.

Palestinians who were killed during May 2004 reached 129 people, which increased the Palestinian loss of life into 3,851 victims (including an estimate of 500 unconfirmed victims of the uninvestigated Jenin massacre). The number of Palestinians who were injured during May 2004 reached 1202 people, which increased Palestinian injuries to 37,254.
The total number of Israelis who were killed during May 2004 was 15, which increased the total number of Israelis killed by the end of May 2004 to 872 (888 according to AP calculations). The total number of Israeli injuries during May 2003 was 15 which [put] the total Israeli injuries about 2,906.

Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Nowhere in Obama's speech, "delivered with an almost immaculate balance of passion and restraint", is there any recognition of a people outside the boundaries of America, geographically or socially. Just us.
Any time someone appeals to your selfishness, chances are good they don't have your best interests at heart. America's fate is being decided now, and it's tilting exactly the wrong way, and yes it's a good thing to unite, to transcend, but uniting all of us is beyond the abilities of the Democrats, or the Republicans, and it isn't something either of them wants anyway.
What they want is a critical mass, a sizable minority, enough weight. Which is sensible, but it has no more moral color than a swarm of bees or a pack of feral dogs.
Pragmatism is more cynical than anything I'm putting forward here, it's just unintentionally cynical. Since the only moral compass most Americans have now is based on intentionality, that seems tangential, even trivial.
But what I'm saying really is, destroying the world by accident is no better than doing it by intent, no different at all.
Watching someone kill themselves slowly through bad habits or quickly with a shotgun is different in each case, for the watcher as it is for the actor; but in the end they're dead, and that's the real issue.
Pretending Kerry's going to alter the fate of the world, or the US, for the better, or for some undefined general good, is no more or less a symptom of denial than pretending terrorists hate "us" because we have freedom and democracy and they don't. As opposed to hating us because we're killing their children.

"If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of, about his leadership ability, about his strength and his courage, just spend three minutes, three minutes with the men who served with him 30 years ago who still stand by his side. They saw up close when their lives were at risk that this man is a leader, that he has courage, determination, and he would never leave any American behind."

OK. But Americans isn't the issue. The biggest threat to the well-being of America, and Americans, is our damaged reputation in the eyes of the world; the thug profile, as the dumb enforcer and tool of greed. Saying Kerry will take care of Americans is good, but at the expense of what? The children of the world? Or just the Muslim world? It's a bad bargain, even for pragmatists. Short-term gains won't work.
That's an appeal to selfishness. Like somebody telling you how much money you'll make. "Just sign here, and don't worry about those people outside the gate. We'll take care of them."
How about sacrifice? How about it isn't going to be fun, it isn't going to be profitable, it's going to hurt and people are going to be uncomfortable at best and suffering terribly at worst, but there is no other way. How about that?
You can't say that in the consumer hell America's become. But it needs saying. Because anything else is a cheap and tawdry lie. There is no easy way through this now. And real people with brown skins are dying, today, to make Americans feel safer, even as the lives of the next generations of Americans are threatened with almost certain disaster, a direct result of the craven selfishness driving the decisions this generation now makes. Or has made for it.

Hiram Rhodes Revels

...attended Knox College's preparatory academy in 1856-57. It was his last year of formal education and a time of great abolitionist fervor at the College. Prior to coming to Knox, Revels had been imprisoned in Missouri for preaching to blacks. He later became the first black pastor of the Madison Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. During the Civil War, he helped organize Maryland's first two black regiments for the U. S. Army.
In 1868, Revels became an alderman in Natchez, Mississippi. In February 1870, he was elected from Mississippi to the United States Senate seat formerly held by Jefferson Davis.

It helps to know that Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy, the "other side" in the American Civil War, which was fought to, among other, less distinct purposes, enforce the abolition of the peculiar institution of human slavery.

Heavy rain

04/07/28	Public Forum "Recovery from Catastrophic Disasters - towards a safer world for all" will be held on 24 August 2004 in Tokyo, Japan.
04/07/21	Death toll rises to 20 after a flash flood in the northern mountainous province of Ha Giang, Vietnam. The flooding injured 10 people, swept away 16 houses, and damaged many road sections as well as residents' property and crops.
04/07/19	Two people have been killed and around 1,500 evacuated from their homes in New Zealand after floods and dozens of small earthquakes hit the country.
04/07/18	Heavy rain hit Fukui prefecture on Sunday, leaving 3 people dead, four others missing.
04/07/13	Heavy rain pounded Niigata and Fukushima prefectures Tuesday, leaving 11 people dead, two injured and three others missing, according to local officials. Asian Disaster Reduction Center

Protestant Group OKs Divestment From Israel
But Vatican Rips Anti-Zionism

...leaders of the largest Presbyterian denomination officially equated the Jewish state with apartheid South Africa and have voted to stop investing in Israel.
With the decision, approved in a 431-62 vote at the 216th annual General Assembly of Presbyterian Church (USA), the church, boasting nearly 3 million members, is believed to be the largest organization or institution to join the divestment campaign against Israel.
It is the first Christian denomination to do so, according to Sister Patricia Wolfe, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of 275 Christian denominations.
"This now raises the issue," Wolfe said, "and will cause ICCR to have a discussion." In 2001 the combined value of the church's foundation and pension fund was estimated at $7 billion.
Leaders of Presbyterian Church (USA), a mainline Protestant church, approved several other anti-Israel resolutions at their gathering in Richmond, Va., and also refused to halt funding for "messianic congregations" that target Jews for conversion.
The Presbyterian resolutions came just as Jewish organizations were hailing the results of a historic international interfaith meeting in Buenos Aires last week, where Roman Catholic officials for the first time signed on to a document equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The declaration, also signed by Jewish communal leaders, calls for "the total rejection of antisemitism in all its forms, including anti-Zionism as a more recent manifestation of antisemitism."
The declaration also decries terrorism, calling it a sin against man and God, and declaring that "terror, in all its forms, and killing 'in the name of God' can never be justified."
"While the Catholics are decrying antisemitism in any form, it appears as if the Presbyterians are pretending it doesn't exist," said Rabbi Gary.

Eric J. Greenberg
Forward 26.Jul.04

Vatican officials are playing down a recent Catholic-Jewish statement that condemned "anti-Zionism," insisting that it does not mark a shift in Vatican policy towards Israel or the Middle East.
The statement, issued at the end of a Catholic-Jewish meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 5-8, was quickly hailed by Jewish leaders as marking a[n] "historic" turn in official Catholic attitudes.
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A senior Vatican official told NCR July 22 that when the declaration was read out in Buenos Aires, a Catholic participant observed that the Holy See had already addressed anti-Zionism in a 1988 document of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace titled "The Church and Racism: Towards a More Fraternal Society." The language in the Buenos Aires declaration, this official said, should be read in light of the earlier document. In paragraph 15, the 1988 document states:

"� As if some had nothing to learn from the crimes of the past, certain organizations, with branches in many countries, keep alive the anti-Semite racist myth, with the support of networks of publications. Terrorist acts which have Jewish persons or symbols as their target have multiplied in recent years and show the radicalism of such groups. Anti-Zionism - which is not of the same order, since it questions the State of Israel and its policies - serves at times as a screen for anti-Semitism, feeding on it and leading to it."

This text, the Vatican official said, makes it more clear that "anti-Zionism" is not identical with anti-Semitism, and that one can question the policies of Israel without automatically being guilty of prejudice.

John L. Allen Jr.
National Catholic Reporter 23.Jul.04

With a Whimper

Aside from possessing an impassioned hatred of Bush, the party is a collection of slogans wrapped around the Democratic Leadership Council's shrill insistence that put-upon yuppie soccer moms can be the foundation of a new middle class. Since the DLC runs the show, that's the program. Michael Moore and Flint, Michigan, represent the old working-class exhibits in the Museum of the New Deal. Dennis Kucinich, a seriously successful Democratic politician in Congress who crosses the aisles to unite members of both parties in ad hoc coalitions against such enemies as the World Bank and NAFTA, is considered in a kindly manner: nice guy, even an interesting guy, but a weirdo New Age consumer of veggies. Ralph Nader, who has methodically and sometimes successfully attacked the corporate rich, is portrayed as an enemy, a spoiler. The delegates hiss at the mention of his name.

After watching Michael Moore's film, why should we vote for a candidate and a team who literally promise more of the same war? And who literally sneer at the working-class values and programs of the New Deal? Perhaps Teddy Kennedy and Teresa Heinz Kerry will answer that question when the delegates gather for the second session this evening.

James Ridgeway
Village Voice
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Maybe thursday...

Reuters.com: Two Killed in Afghan Blast, Aid Agency Pulls Out

More than 900 people have been killed in violence during the past year that has targeted foreign and local troops, aid workers and people involved in preparing for the country's first free, direct elections.
MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning aid organization, said it was leaving Afghanistan because of fears for the safety of staff after five workers, including three foreigners, were attacked and killed on a remote road in the northwest in June.

The group issued a stinging rebuke of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying they had used aid work to help them win over Afghans skeptical of their intentions.
"MSF denounces this attempt to co-opt humanitarian aid, to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds," MSF secretary general Marine Buissonniere told a briefing, adding that in doing so it had endangered the lives of aid workers.

The decision will be a blow to the Afghan government, which relies heavily on humanitarian aid in its impoverished and war-shattered country.

The Hindu : International : 2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert

"Official statistics do not include casualties among non-U.S. nationals who sign up to serve in the American armed forces in order to get a U.S. `green card.' According to reliable information the share of non-Americans in the U.S. force in Iraq may be as high as 60 per cent," the source said. "The real number of U.S. losses may be as high as 2,000 casualties and up to 12,000 wounded," the military diplomat said.

Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

Human Costs

Effects of Depleted Uranium:The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in Southern Iraq.

Foreign Policy In Focus 24.Jun.04

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link KWSnet

twophoto Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP
Second visit of an American frigate to the port of Danang since the end of the war of Vietnam, thirty years ago.

rabble columns Linda McQuaig:

pesky nuclear waste

Ontario made massive investments in nuclear power in the 1970s � investments that saddled Ontario electricity consumers with enormous debts that we are still paying off.
These plants haven't just been financially disastrous; they also haven't worked that well.
Eight of our 20 reactors were shut down in the mid-1990s. Today, five are out of order and require very expensive repairs. The rest will soon be coming to the end of their natural life, if a nuclear plant can be said to have such a thing.
All this would seem to confirm the view that nuclear power is a phenomenon best put behind us � except, of course, for working out that pesky problem about how to get rid of the waste that's already been generated.
But the anticipated energy crunch in Ontario has given new life to the nuclear industry.

Amnesty International Urgent Actions:

Mariela Mendoza, eyewitness to her brothers' murders - just three of more than 100 others allegedly killed between 1999 and 2002 by an ''extermination group'' that operated inside the Portuguesa state police force - has just narrowly escaped an attempt on her life. Urge the Venezuelan government to investigate the recent murder attempt on Mariela Mendoza and to guarantee her safety.

Reuters.com:
"There are 18 glacial mountains in Peru and they are all experiencing melting"

"I think Americans should know that our actions in Israel are the single greatest emblem of anti-Arabism, anti-Islamicism. They, are for the entire Muslim world, a red flag. And then Americans sit back and say, 'Why don't they seem to like us?'"

Richard Ben Cramer
Gary Kamiya, executive editor Salon

This is from a post on a thread on a blog that doesn't need the heat of being linked to, by me, now:

General Anthony Zinni, U.S.M.C. (Ret.) a past chief of the U.S. Central Command and President Bush's former Middle East special envoy, told "60 Minutes" on Sunday that the neoconservatives' role in pushing the war for Israel's benefit was "the worst-kept secret in Washington." Three days earlier, Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, rose on the Senate floor to defend a newspaper essay he had written earlier in the month making the same charge. Both men complained that they had been unfairly labeled antisemitic for speaking out.

That's from a story at infoshopnews that's no longer in their archives. It's a reprint from the original in the Forward. Maybe you've heard of it? A Jewish publication? Out on the barricades when it was extremely dangerous to be there, and at the front ever since. I'm not sure but my guess is Ori Nir's a Jew. Here's another story by him:

Senate Report on Iraq Intel Points to Role of Jerusalem
Cooperation between Israel and the United States helped produce a series of intelligence failures in the lead up to the Iraq war, according to separate reports issued by members of the Senate and the Knesset.

story here
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Israel stands to benefit greatly from the US led war on Iraq, primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in President Saddam Hussein and the threat from the weapons of mass destruction he was alleged to possess. But it seems the Israelis have other things in mind.

An intriguing pointer to one potentially significant benefit was a report by Haaretz on 31 March that minister for national infrastructures Joseph Paritzky was considering the possibility of reopening the long-defunct oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean port of Haifa. With Israel lacking energy resources of its own and depending on highly expensive oil from Russia, reopening the pipeline would transform its economy.

I know you'd rather it was Lyndon LaRouche or David Duke, but that's from Jane's Information Group, formerly Jane's Fighting Ships, the premier non-governmental source for military news in the world. Nobody has better credentials or a stronger reputation for unbiased accuracy. Trying to pin it on me and my disturbed mentality won't work.
Two of the most important women in my life had Jewish fathers. Joseph Brodsky, Bob Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg are heroes of mine, without reservation or qualification, men whose work and stance in the world I try to emulate every day.
I'm violently sick of being labeled an anti-Semite for saying what should be obvious to relatively bright ten-year olds. You guys all mewl around with terms like Straussian and neo-cons because you don't have the vocabulary to describe accurately what you're really talking about. And neither do I. It's hiding behind those vague terms, just like it's hiding behind the victims of Holocaust and genocide, and whenever it's accused it throws up the bodies of the innocent as shield.
Does it make you feel brave and slightly heroic to step into the breach like that? With the whole of American culture behind you? Try doing this.
That smug sense of moral superiority is repellent, by itself, when it's mistaken it's even more disgusting, and when it's focused on me personally, without a trace of recognition for the heat generated by this near-public expression of social taboo, it's insulting.
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Things you probaly aren't clearly aware of about Iraq:

The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and the subsequent enslavement of the Jews, was and is huge in the list of wrongs carried by a long-memoried people. Paul Bremer is a Jew. You think that's trivial and unimportant? Putting a Jew in his position over a nation already festering with anti-Semitism, you think that was an oversight? So unimportant it slipped right by everybody? Except those ignorant anti-Semitic Arabs, right? They probably noticed it huh? You think? Maybe? Remember Tommy Franks? He was the general that led the invasion. Slipped that right by you too huh? Trivial unimportant anti-Semitic nonsense. The top miliitary commander of the invasion, and the head of the occupation, both Jews. But only an anti-Semite would notice that, and only a rabid anti-Semite would mention it in polite company.
Janis Karpinski, the fall-person for the Abu Ghraib atrocities has said on the record she encountered anomalous agents while on duty who purported to be Israelis.
The Israeli and American governments both denied vehemently the presence of any Israeli agents in Iraq much less at Abu Ghraib.
Here's Jane's again on the presence of Israeli agents in Iraq:

Foreign Report has learnt that top Shin Bet interrogation experts were sent to Iraq to help with the most difficult interrogations, such as the captured heads of the Iraqi intelligence - and perhaps with former president Saddam Hussein. US sources say that in spite of the incidences of abuse in Abu Ghraib prison, such events are not representative of the sophisticated methods that Shin Bet used in Iraq.

The point-for-dummies of all this is that hiding behind the real sufferings of a complex and multi-faceted people are the most heinous villains in the world. Safe from attack because every accusation is deflected onto the innocent victims they shield themseves with.
And knee-jerk responses like yours, aside from the sort of benignly delivered insult to me personally, play right into that.
I'm talking about a group of men powerful enough to seize control of the American government, and the electoral process. They haven't been even slightly inconvenienced by the trickle of criticism that exists in the US, thanks in large part to the voluntary assistance rendered by well-meaning but essentially clueless individuals such as yourself.

Crisis of the Two-party System

The Democratic National Convention, which opened Monday in Boston, is the culmination of a drive by the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party, the media and the U.S. ruling elite as a whole to banish from the November presidential election any debate on the most critical issue facing the American people - the war in Iraq.

The impending coronation of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as the Democratic presidential candidate is the result of a concerted effort during the Democratic primaries to undermine the campaign of then-front-runner Howard Dean, whose bid to win the nomination became a rallying point for mass antiwar sentiment among Democratic voters and in the population at large. The aim was to silence and suppress that sentiment.

This process of political disenfranchisement is to be completed with the official endorsement of Kerry and his running mate, North Carolina Senator John Edwards. Both are multimillionaire representatives of the U.S. ruling elite. Both voted in October of 2002 for the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq, and both voted in favor of the Patriot Act. That measure, under the guise of fighting the so-called "war on terror," gives the CIA, FBI and other police agencies unprecedented powers to spy on the American people and override constitutionally protected civil liberties.

World Socialist Web Site Jul.26.04
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post grafted from KWSnet

Tank McNamara goes for the gold

27 July 2004 e-news from Survival International, supporting tribal

peoples worldwide.

Founded in 1969, registered charity (UK) no. 267444



Sri Lanka: Veddahs appeal to be allowed to return home

The Veddah people of Sri Lanka have appealed to their country's

government to allow them to return to their land. One Veddah man told

a Survival researcher, 'Living in the jungle, we had everything we

needed. We can't get these things here in the village. We want to go

back to our jungle.'

http://www.survival-international.org/news.htm





Brazil: Arara on the brink of destruction

The Brazilian government has unexpectedly halted the demarcation of a

key territory belonging to the Arara Indians, called Cachoeira Seca.

The tribe, some of whom were only contacted in 1987, are fighting for

survival against waves of loggers, land speculators and settlers who

have illegally invaded their territory.

http://www.survival-international.org/news.htm





Ethiopia: Mursi cattle-herders face wave of settlement

Three thousand families belonging to the farming Konso people have

been moved onto the lowland territory of the cattle-herding Mursi and

Bodi peoples in the southwest of the country. The move is part of the

Ethiopian government's scheme, backed by the World Bank, to resettle

2.2 million people.

http://www.survival-international.org/news.htm

�America�s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.� �or, in the vernacular, �It�s the policy, stupid!�
Michael Scheuer, the CIA analyst author of 'Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror' , emphasizes that Bin Laden�s �genius� is his ability to exploit U.S. policies�first and foremost, our one-sided support for Israel�that are most offensive to Muslims, and notes that it is particularly difficult to have a serious debate regarding U.S. policy toward Israel.
As if to prove Scheuer right, Commissioner Bob Kerrey yesterday on ABC�s This Week recited a familiar mantra: You cannot negotiate; you cannot compromise with those who have reached the conclusion that terrorism is their only option.
I was reminded of Rumsfeld�s complaint on the same program some months ago: �How do you persuade people not to become suicide bombers; how do you reduce the number of people attracted to terrorism? No one knows how to do that.�
I find myself hoping that Rumsfeld, Kerrey and others will read and ponder the implications of what is said on pages 374 and following of the 9/11 commission report.

Ray McGovern/TomPaine.com/Common Dreams Jul.26.04

two
photo: St�phane De Sakutin/AFP

Marie, l'affabulatrice du RER, a comparu lundi devant le tribunal correctionnel de Pontoise pour "d�nonciation de d�lit imaginaire".

World as Home

The racist arguments for slavery didn't begin the process, they were grasped at when the moral hideousness of the practice became too obvious. First was the desire to keep slaves, the hunger for it, then came the rationale, the excuse, that these were not "people". They were lesser beings, and fit to only to serve or run wild. But first was the desire.
That's a key point. The argument is being made because the desire is there, and it is not the desire to "save lives". That's a by-product, that's a selling point, that's the pay-off. And it's a good one. Like the economy in a slaveholder's plea. When it's his own profit and ease he really argues to preserve.
Anyone who has a family member whose life would be bettered or sustained by this kind of research will find it easy to make the logical transition the "scientists" offer. Just as with any immediate benefit, logic gets hazy, things jumble up, it's simpler to go along with the powerful and seemingly inevitable.
But the course of this "progress" is profane, it benefits what is now an ascendant minority, it began there, and its rationale originates there. The "human race" is not a constant thing. It's as mutable as any other large group, what it is depends on what its parts are; the things we do now determine who will be "human" tomorrow. Those changes are broad and slow, and impossible to see from within a human lifetime. So the illusion that they don't take place at all is an easy one to create. But they do happen, they are happening.
An obvious example would be the trivial difference between myopic and acute vision, here, now, the way we live today. But for most of our history that difference was crucial, and the dim-sighted were inferior, dangerously so.
Better minds than mine have gone over this, made it clearer, but at its base it's about a choice, to blindly accept that prosthetic life, to remain uneasy with it, or to reject it entirely. This choice is anathema to the nameless thing behind the smarmy "life-saving" arguments for what are inhuman and anti-life practices.
Just as we now accept the handicap of weak vision as unimportant we will surely be told to accept the consumption of human lives, especially the lives of the "inferior", as "necessary" and life-saving sacrifices, and those that do accept it will raise generations of children to whom it's just the way the world is. Stop it now.
The clash is not between two opponents of equal stature. It's between animals that adapted to the world as it is, with all its change and diverse flux, and creatures who could not survive - that's crucial - they cannot survive, without completely controlling their environment, and bending it to their own need.
Thus we have the world on fire, the landscape emptying of life and filling with poison, and the true carriers of the truly human, the world's indigenous people, harried into the complex hives of industry, their cultures broken and travestied as amusements.
Not because it's the inevitable "progress" of mankind, but because it's the only way a certain type of human can survive.
Vampires, cannibals, all the monsters of story and myth, but fat with success and served by earnest and well-intentioned deputies. And it happens in the daytime, instead of in the dark.

New Scientist Jul.22.04:

There could be no better reason for having a child than to save the life of another child...

Fertility regulators in the UK have ruled that families can pre-select embryos which could potentially save ill siblings.
To date, applications to pick genetically matched embryos for implantation for this purpose in the UK have been mired in legal opposition. The new ruling clears the way for families to proceed unhindered.
"In terms of officially sanctioning this, we're the first in the world," said a spokeswoman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates all in-vitro fertilisation procedures and experiments on embryos in the UK.
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...it has been attacked by pro-life and other opposition groups who say it turns babies into commodities."It's wrong to create a child simply as a means to an end, however good that end might be," says David King of the London-based lobby group, Human Genetics Alert.
But the authority is adamant that its ruling is practical, ethical and humane. "This treatment can benefit the whole family," said Suzi Leather, chair of the HFEA in a statement on Wednesday.
Leather says that although the ethical issues are important, the primary focus of the authority has been whether the screening procedure itself - which involves removal of cells - harms embryos and babies.

Ronald Reagan carried the American people with him in his great endeavours because there was perfect sympathy between them. He and they loved America and what it stands for - freedom and opportunity for ordinary people.
As an actor in Hollywood's golden age, he helped to make the American dream live for millions all over the globe. His own life was a fulfilment of that dream. He never succumbed to the embarrassment some people feel about an honest expression of love of country.
He was able to say 'God Bless America' with equal fervour in public and in private. And so he was able to call confidently upon his fellow-countrymen to make sacrifices for America - and to make sacrifices for those who looked to America for hope and rescue.
With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world. And so today the world - in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw, in Sofia, in Bucharest, in Kiev and in Moscow itself - the world mourns the passing of the Great Liberator and echoes his prayer "God Bless America".

Margaret Thatcher, eulogy forRonald Reagan
Symbols.net

mother loses

"Extremists" scupper another UK animal lab | New Scientist

"Crucial" medical research may be under threat in the UK, scientists have warned, after blaming the halt in building of an �18 million animal experimentation laboratory in Oxford on action by animal rights "extremists".

Oxford University revealed on Monday that by "mutual consent" it had agreed with the construction firm Montpellier Plc to end their contract to build the biomedical research facility.

Montpellier pulled out following an intimidation campaign by animal rights "extremists", which targeted shareholders. A company that supplied concrete to the site is also reported to have come under attack.

US states sue over global warming | New Scientist

Eight US states and New York City filed a lawsuit against five US power companies for their contribution to global warming, in a historic action on Wednesday.
The states - citing resistance from the federal government - are banding together to force the utility companies to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by at least 3 per cent per year for 10 years.
"If we do not act soon, the steps we will need to take to prevent global warming will be much greater and much harder," says New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

"Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am inclined to believe, that all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation, may be included within the following descriptions. Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men, who cannot see; prejudiced men, who will not see; and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the ... world than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this continent, than all the other three.
It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us for a few moments to Boston, that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us for ever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust."

Thomas Paine
Thoughts on the present state of American affairs
Common Sense

Bartleby

Netscape News: When the Democratic Party takes up its platform next week at the presidential nominating convention in Boston, one of the planks it will consider is media concentration.
"Because our democracy thrives on public access to diverse sources of information from multiple sources, we support measures to ensure diversity, competition and localism in media ownership," the proposed platform plank states.

as noted in the Naval Investigative Service Office Washington�s 1 November 1966 letter to J. Edgar Hoover (File # 20- BE/DEA/js Ser: 1956, is it a fact that the complete report contains no reference to the finding of or the lack of fingerprints or the lack thereof on this pistol? The answer to the aforementioned question is extremely important inasmuch as the investigative report tells of Pitzer committing suicide by a right-handed self-inflicted handgun wound in the head and yet Pitzer�s associate whom he had shared the fact and the essence of his secret possession of the autopsy photos, Dennis D. David, told me unequivocally, when I first spoke with him, that his friend William Bruce Pitzer was indeed left handed.

Biography: William Pitzer [Kennedy autopsy photos]
Spartacus

a member of the family of nations and a vibrant, creative accomplishment
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in obedience to the treaty of 1835, to join the part of your people who are already established in prosperity on the other side of the Mississippi
Trail of Tears
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left in gutter/Mother and child
Armenia 1914
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Slaughter of the Innocent
inextricably linked to Botswana's diamond trade and indeed, the country's economy
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anything up to 50,000 years ago

The disease is selfishness. The problem is selfishness.

It is important to learn to know the enemies of the American way of life.

Condors have died after ingesting lead
�

Environmental groups and local residents Tuesday criticized a tentative plan by the Tejon Ranch Co. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that protects ranch developers if they accidentally harm or kill endangered California condors, but also takes steps to protect the huge birds.

That's the lead paragraph in an LA Times story by Daryl Kelley July 14. "Environmental" meaning granola-eating radicals to most Americans these days, and notice the doubling up on "protect" and the "accidentally" harm or kill. It's not an accident if you don't care.

As part of a plan to protect condors while allowing Tejon Ranch to develop its property, officials announced at a meeting Tuesday in this Tehachapi Mountains community that about 37,000 acres on the ranch would be set aside for feeding and care of the birds.

That's the third paragraph in the same article. It kind of makes you want to go feed the developers doesn't it? Such nice people! Planning to protect! Setting aside for feeding!
Here's some more heartfelt truth from Mr. Stine, the farmer:

"This isn't about killing condors; this is about preserving them," Tejon Ranch President Robert A. Stine said in an interview. "What we're doing is setting aside tens of thousands of acres for them."
Stine said Tejon Ranch has been in negotiations with the Fish and Wildlife Service since 1992 to determine how to pursue ranch activities and projects while also meeting federal law that protects endangered species such as the condor. He said a Kern County rancher was put in jail a couple of years ago because he ran over a protected kangaroo rat with his tractor.
"That really happened," Stine said. "As a private land owner you run the risk of doing something you can get penalized for. So we're entering into this agreement so we can be a good citizen and continue to do our farming activities."

�

3/15/03; Frazier Park, Calif.- Tejon Ranch Co.'s annual "Pig-O-Rama" appears to have been the death knell for 30 year-old AC-8, one of the few remaining native California Condors born in the wild, and a favorite to many So. Calif. school children.
Our sources tell us that the condor was killed while sitting in a tree, and that the shooter thought it was a "buzzard", during the 25-man annual wild boar pig hunting event sponsored by the Ranch, as a part of their game management program. We are asking Ranch officials to comment on this report and will publish their response if and when received.
In October, 1999, TRC President Robert Stine signed an 11-page, 75-year agreement with the US Fish & Wildlife Service regarding the Condor, in exchange for concessions from USFWS regarding future residential and commercial development at the Ranch. In that document and negotiations related thereto, Tejon promised observation, management oversight and diligent on-site protection of the birds, in view of the frequent travel of this endangered species over Ranch properties.

story by Lloyd Wiens [scroll to pig-o-rama]
from the Frazier Park enews March 15, 2003
via shopoutdoors
�
Kerry's Strategy Accents Positive Alternative
That's the lead headline on the LA Times' online front page for July 25, a story by Ronald Brownstein.

"The country does not need to be won over to the fact that it wants change," said veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg. "It needs to be won over to the fact that Kerry is the person who can lead that change."

That's the seventh paragraph in that story. What some of us might find ironic here is the stress on the country not needing "to be won over to the fact that it wants change" and the complete lack of acknowledgement that there's no one else but Bush and Kerry running for the Presidency.

What do you mean "we"?

Mr. Hersh, [bio], will revisit this issue within the next several weeks. In the meantime, the American news media has an obligation to report on this situation. Photographic and videotape evidence of this torture is currently in the hands of the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the U.S. Congress and the White House. It must be released.

We invaded a country based upon the false claim that Iraq was allied with al Qaeda. We invaded a country based on the false claim that there were weapons of mass destruction which needed to be destroyed. We promised freedom and democracy, and instead installed a CIA-trained strongman named Allawi who has all but created a dictatorship in Iraq, and who has been accused of killing Iraqi prisoners by his own hand. 896 American soldiers have died so we could do this.

We took thousands of innocent civilians off the streets in Iraq and threw them into hellhole prisons, where they were beaten, raped, and killed. This story has faded from public view because no new pictures of the abuses have come out in the last several weeks. Those pictures are out there, and they show the rape and torture of children. The international media is reporting on it. Coalition ally Norway may be preparing to flee Iraq because of the allegations regarding these children.

Where is the American news media? Where are the pictures? Who is responsible for this abomination? Torturing children in the name of freedom?

William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t

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link From The Wilderness

17 And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation.

18 For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.

19 Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy.

20 And he that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of him and the power of his redemption.

21 Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ.

CHAPTER 8
THE BOOK OF MORONI
The BOOK OF MORMON

...the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God...

R.A. Bloch Cancer Foundation
Richard Bloch

Government-industry revolving door puts industry-friendly experts in positions of decision-making power. Often individuals rotate between working for industry and working for the government in regulatory capacities, arrangements that are fraught with potential for conflicts of interest.

Disinfopedia
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Spin of The Day

from $5.15 to $7.15 an hour

a confrontation of unspeakable consequences

EXICO CITY - A special prosecutor filed charges on Friday against a former president and other officials in the killings of student protesters 33 years ago, reopening a dark and divisive episode that was a turning point in Mexico's struggle for democracy
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...Mexico's biggest step in the pursuit of justice. Mr. Carrillo said that in addition to Mr. Echeverr�a, who was president from 1970 to 1976, he will seek the arrest and trial of several former government officials and military officers. Those accused include a former internal security minister, Mario Moya, and a former attorney general, Julio S�nchez Vargas. Three former army generals may also face charges in the case.
International human rights activists, including Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch, applauded the indictments as "achieving the unthinkable."
Some Mexicans, however, expressed resentment and reservations.
Relatives of those killed in the 1971 attacks, including Jes�s Mart�n del Campo, called the indictments "a small, but important step."
Mr. Mart�n del Campo, whose brother was killed, said, "So many governments had told us this case was closed. At least now, we are a little closer to justice."

Ginger Thompson-Tim Weiner/NYTimes Jul.24.04 (reg. free)
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link KWSnet

The flag is recognizable to a goodly number of Americans, but not to most. There's been this commercial here in the US, I first noticed it the day after Chirac told Sharon he was no longer welcome in France. It's a fast food company, its logo-golem bantering with a frenchman, or an actor with a broad french accent. It ends with a gesture of disdain on the part of the golem. The subject of their conversation is the company's transforming its "french" fries to something more appetizing to its customer base. The frenchman is cathartically humiliated with his own cliched gesture.
The pit bull, or Staffordshire Terrier, that a few years ago was frightening honest citizens and nervous mothers throughout the land, was bred for entertainment. It was bred to survive contests in pits, mortal contests. Like cock fights only with mammals. The people whose sport that was were useful to the kind of men and women who ran things in the England of that era. A kind of symbiosis, two utterly different types of human being co-operating, one with its weak blood and cunning mind and inherited power, the other with its strong back and its numb heart and dim intellect. It is exactly that spirit, the spirit of that symbiotic bleakness and violence, the blood lust of people who have absolutely no hope of grace, that now saturates America, though the American royalty are completely invisible to the so-called common people.

Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953
Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov

review in The New York Review of Books Jul.17.03
Anne Applebaum

Long Echo
Books of Memory

The perpetuation of the memory of the victims is one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult tasks of Memorial. It was around this very idea that Memorial formed in 1988. Quite a bit has been accomplished during the past decade, but much more remains to be done.
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Through the extermination and the persecution of millions of people, the Soviet government attempted to conceal its crimes. Who knows exactly how many victims of terror there were? Where were the executed buried? Where were the countless camps and what transpired behind the barbed wire? Even the relatives of the deceased do not know the truth: "10 years without the right to correspondence" � this was the only information given about the fate of the convict under Stalinism, the short formula of his life and death.
How can one find the truth in a world full of lies that obstruct our history? And it is it worth trying? It is, after all, easy to live in a nice and simple world of illusions. The reality of history does not lend comfort, does not lead to success and prosperity, but rather complicates everything. It creates problems of guilt and responsibility, opens old wounds, and awakes shame where only pride should exist.
Yet leaving behind the tragic truth means abandoning one�s own memory. A society without memory will obediently play into the hands of any demagogue; people in such a society are no better than nuts and bolts in the state machine. They are worthless slaves to an inhumane ideology that promises everyone happiness.
However horrible the past may have been, forgetting it would make the future even worse.
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The perpetuation of the memory of the victims is one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult tasks of Memorial. It was around this very idea that Memorial formed in 1988. Quite a bit has been accomplished during the past decade, but much more remains to be done.
From the very outset, three areas of work assumed top priority: the establishment of a list of the names of all victims and the publication of these names; the clarification of the places of burial of the deceased, and the establishment of memorial signs on these burial places.

museum
Handmade Items:

Kotschi (Austrian prisoner)
963. Case for spectacles
Karlag (Dolinka)
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Levina, Zinaida Semenovna 1904-1991
901. Napkin
Kolyma: camp
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Unidentified master
903. Embroidered inset for woman's undergarment
Temniki camp (Potma)
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Rogalskaya, Dora Moiseevna
924.The Virgin and Child, embroidered icon
Karlag (Dolinka)

below the surface

America's coral reefs are in trouble. From the disease-ridden dying reefs of the Florida Keys, to the overfished and denuded reefs of Hawaii and the Virgin Islands, this country's richest and most valued marine environment continues to decline in size, health, and productivity.

Tundi Agardy
Issues in Science and Technology
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U.S. Coral Reef Task Force

Corporal J. D. M. Pearson, GC, WAAF
Dame Laura Knight

Daphne Pearson, WAAC (born 26 May 1911), was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal, subsequently exchanged for the George Cross, for her bravery in rescuing the pilot of an aircraft which had crashed at Detling, Kent, in the early hours of 31 May 1940. As she helped the pilot to get clear of the wreckage one of the aircraft's 120lb bombs exploded. She threw herself on top of the pilot to protect him from the blast and shrapnel.

Myths and Heroes
Truth and Propaganda
Imperial War Museum Collections Online

The Drug War's Perverse Toll

Societies that attempt to control behavior by relying on police and prisons rather than families have more crime and heavier taxes, plus ever larger outlays for private security. The great fiscal virtue of attentive parenting and matrimonial stability is that they are by far the cheapest way to maintain social order.

Heavy reliance on the criminal justice system can also reach the point where it undermines family life. Imprisoning a large number of men distorts the marriage market and thereby increases the likelihood of illegitimacy and discourages the formation of families. This is especially true for groups that have low gender ratios, the most important group being blacks in inner cities. Criminal justice reform-in particular, reform of drug laws and drug enforcement tactics-can help to restore balance to the black marriage market. Making the number of marriageable black men and women more nearly equal is a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for a long-term reduction in the high levels of criminal violence and social disorder that plague U.S. inner cities.

David T. Courtwright, Winter 1996
Issues in Science and Technology

This Is Nazi Brutality
Ben Shahn
Powers of Persuasion
National Archives ...ready access to essential evidence...