Mr Green is getting richer
�BBC 11.06.03

La Guerra Sucia
The Supreme Court in Mexico has ruled that two former police officers can be tried for the disappearance of a young revolutionary nearly 30 years ago.

President Fox appointed a special Dirty War investigator
The move clears the way for the possible arrest and prosecution of former officials implicated in the kidnappings of left-wing activists in the late 1960s and '70s.
�
The ruling has been welcomed by politicians and human rights groups in Mexico and abroad.
The Supreme Court said the statute of limitations did not apply since Mr Piedra's body has never been found and the investigation is still open.
�Daniel Schweimler /BBC 11.06.03

Wolfowitz
...doesn't seem to get it, that the student is referring to the period 1983-1990 when the US was a close ally of Saddam's, when it authorized the sale of chemical and biological precursors to Saddam, when it had the US navy function essentially as an auxiliary of Saddam's military.
Either he didn't get it or he was using misdirection to shift attention away from his own former alliance with Saddam (I wonder if he's managed to have all those files shredded?)

That is bad enough. But then he said, "It seems to me that the north star of your comment is that you dislike this country and its policies." And you know, I want to puke at a statement like that. Objecting to the Bush administration's policies is not the same as to "dislike this country."
�Juan Cole 11.02.03
link from Body and Soul

Ω{Atrios of Eschaton does this much better, more concisely than I can, but it's vital, it has to be done soon, the vocabulary must be created, these men given a new name, and their devices exposed for what they are, tricks, deceptions, ultimately lies that kill.
Imagine aliens who could camoflage themselves as children; and not as generic children, your children.
Come home to you and tell you about their day, wake up to pancakes on Saturday morning, help you mow the lawn. And the whole time they're pretending to be your children they're going around the neighborhood killing people and eating them.
You can't raise your hand against them because they're your children. Not until you make that break. In order to stop them, you have to redefine them out of the family.
We have to stop seeing Wolfowitz and his scum-brethren as Americans, they're not. The tension created, between the rejection of any connection with them, and the sense of being an American, is crippling.
As long as Wolfowitz is an American, either I'm with him or I'm not an American.
No.
They may live in America, but they are another thing, an as-yet nameless thing, and they hide behind that namelessness, using the names of the things we love as their own.
So that to attack them where they hide is to attack America. But it isn't.
It's attacking them, to stop them, not America.
This is happening to Jews as well. The same way. Hiding behind a definition of what it is to be a Jew, so that to attack them is to attack all Jews, men whose true nature goes undefined.
It's the same deceit, the same scam.
These alien, opportunistic, manipulative evil men who would sacrifice everything high and good about human existence to further their own narrow colorless lives.}

Lantis knocked four times on the door, knowing the room was empty, but it was one of the formal requirements of his employment, and the protection it gave him to do what was required was vital, and really it was nothing, like the jacket and tie, subdued, reassuring, not new not old, there. An unnoticable but measurable pause between the third and fourth knock and a slight increase in intensity gave it a tone of authority, like the closing of a book, an official book, a record of activities and contacts, a case in the hands of a judge.
He unlocked the door and opened it, not moving from the threshold, glancing at the unmade bed, the dresser, the shaded window. A smell of onion made him grimace. Cheap peasant food. No perfume or cologne, the sink crusted with shaving soap, nothing in the wastebasket, he walked toward the window. There under the inside corner of the bed, lying on its thin edge, stuck between the rough wool blanket and the wall, an envelope. He bends to see, it's postmarked B_______, and thick with folded paper, he intends at first to read what must be a long and potentially interesting letter, but sees instead what has to be 6 months salary in francs, wrapped in a single sheet of stationery. He sits on the bed to count it. Then reads the letter. Oh ho. Congratulating himself on recognizing the fugitive couple for what they were in spite of their relaxed posturing, he removes the money, which isn't mentioned in the five paragraphs of the letter, then quietly locks the door behind him as he heads calmly, purposefully, through the next three moves of the long gambit his life is now; too resolute for a pawn, not brave enough for a knight, a bishop of secrecy, going back to his queen with his discovered en prise.
A concise visit with Marda, after a much longer stroking session with Special-Lieutenant Plenc, a bath at home and on to the cafe, just in time to watch the sun touch the horizon under a sky as flat and grey as the plains below it, the strip of light and its gold-orange ball like a promise, a winning ticket. Now we'll see, thought Lantis, almost trembling with gratification, both sides of his furtive life gilded by unexpected fortune.
He ordered the prix fixe, some wine, and watched the light fading through the long windows, the only immediate obstacle to his complete satisfaction the drunken stare of that novelist with the ridiculous Spanish name, Jaime what-was-it? Lantis tried to ignore him, caught in the dull unwavering beam of his attention, gaze not withdrawing as the waiter set down his salad and he murmured his thanks. Hartz, that was it. One of the Dangling Partisans, rumored to have informed on his companions, a disgraced academic collapsing into inevitable poverty, his table cluttered with the quick formula of oblivion, cheap gin and absinthe.
Hartz continued to stare, turning away only to drink.
He couldn't know, they wouldn't let him walk around, knowing. I would have heard.
It's envy, he can tell I'm on my way, up and out of this rat-hole of a city where he'll die, probably this winter, alone and unnoticed unless there's a problem, a mess.
The tailor, tomorrow a new suit, then another month at the hotel, a ticket in advance to the south, and then once across the border...

Yitzhak Rabin March 1, 1922�November 4, 1995

Murdered prime minister was right, Shimon Peres tells huge Israeli demonstration urging an end to occupation
A rally in memory of Yitzhak Rabin eight years after his murder turned into the largest leftwing demonstration since Ariel Sharon came to power as more than 100,000 people at the weekend gathered under banners denouncing occupation and demanding peace.
�
The crowd was also bolstered by widespread revulsion at the desecration of the memorial to Mr Rabin, which was daubed with swastikas the day before the rally.
Mr Rabin was murdered by Yigal Amir, an extremist Jew who was opposed to surrendering any part of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
The vandalism came after the arrest of a man who was shown on television stopping at the memorial and spitting on it three times.
In a further reminder of the hatred for Mr Rabin and his colleagues, who are routinely denounced by Israeli rightwingers as the "Oslo criminals", Mr Peres spoke behind bulletproof glass.
�Chris McGreal/Guardian UK 11.03.03
link Common Dreams 11.03.03

John Lennon, Tom Waits and especially Sinead O�Connor
Smadar Elchanan was only a baby when she became a poster child for the peace movement.
Her photograph appeared in a 1984 flier that called for peace with the Arabs so that the children of Israel might enjoy a better future. The brief message on the flier mused about what life in Israel would be like when Smadar reached the age of 15.
Who would have guessed that she wouldn�t make it?
Smadar Elchanan was killed by an Islamic suicide bomber 10 days ago as she went shopping for a birthday present on Jerusalem�s Ben Yehuda Street. She was just two weeks shy of her 14th birthday. And in death, as in life, she has become something of a symbol for Israel.
The girl�s truncated biography is weighted with irony. Her grandfather was the late Brig. Gen. Matti Peled, a hero of the Six-Day War of 1967, who was one of the first Israeli officials to talk with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In deference to Peled, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat sent a personal envoy to Smadar�s funeral last Sunday at a kibbutz in central Israel. That was shocking in itself, but then Smadar�s mother, Nurit Peled-Elchanan, issued the coup de grace when she made a startling accusation in a radio interview: "I hold the government of Israel responsible for the death of my daughter."
�Barbara Demick/Philadelphia Inquirer 09.14.97

photo: Patrick Baz/AFP 11.05.03

Iraqi schoolgirls walk by US forces patrolling in Baghdad's suburb of Abu Gharib.

Maxwell's body found in sea
On this day in 1991, Robert Maxwell was found dead, floating in the Atlantic ocean.
Guardian UK
�
Consortium 1996

Farewell, Voyager
The most distant man-made object - the Voyager 1 spacecraft - is finally leaving the Solar System. Astronomers think the probe has reached a boundary where the Sun's influence starts to wane.
�
"It's the first time a machine has gone outside the cocoon of the solar atmosphere." says Stamatios Krimigis of Johns Hopkins University
�
In around 2020, Voyager 1 is expected to reach the heliopause at roughly 135 AU (one AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). This is where the Sun's influence fades away entirely and interstellar space begins. Astronomers will then get their first chance to measure the magnetic fields and energetic particles of interstellar space.
�Hazel Muir/New Scientist 11.05.03

Pauline had forgotten the envelope with her sister's address on it, and at first she was devastated, we both were, but she was brave in the shame and confusion of it, stoic beyond my assessment of her ability to be.
A complex series of numbers and names in a foreign language, now neither of us could remember enough of it to be credible when questioned. And the money, we'd laughed about it, how it had turned in the crucible of events from a bourgeois fetish into something as sacred as the breath of a lover.
And now that it was gone it had turned again.
How close the border had seemed that morning! Yet by noon it was a story we'd heard as children and put away, like a fairytale, as we took on the detailed narrative of our adult lives.
It was still possible we might find it, somehow, though we couldn't go back to the hotel of course, and finding the tram we'd taken through the grey dawn was out of the question.
We'd searched everywhere in the cafe, our few pockets, even the men's room. Usually I was the one who thought of things like writing a duplicate of the address, splitting the money into two separate packs, but I'd been too busy in the little time we'd had the night before, and this morning there'd been no time at all.
Once we'd accepted it, once she realized it was irretrievably gone, her eyes had shifted from mine, then made that quick glance back�was I paternal, disapproving, made strong by her weakness? Or worse, was my need for her strength increased, was it her task now to decide which locked door we'd try next?
Then I saw it come over her, a tremor of will, determined, insistent, the kind of courage that has no promise to light its way, cold purposeful defiance that would be hers no matter how the end came.
I reached across the table and touched the back of her hand with my fingers; she smiled, just enough, then called to the barman for another mat�.
It was November, there was still frost in the shadows of the trees, though the sun came through the long windows like summer.
We had four hours of daylight left, three after that until the curfew.

course requirement
Dennett: Consciousness

A full day
Chris Corrigan, in addition to side projects Parking Lot
'an eclectic mix of thoughts and findings'
and Bowen Island Journal
'Life off the coast of North America'
and his professional life as a 'consultant in organizational and community development'
has now started Maps and Territories
'An occasional blog by an amateur map lover'

just when I was feeling a little pressed due to backed-up paperwork, relatively urgent home repairs and a sink full of dishes.

If an elephant loses its faculties, abler elephants feed it. Rare behavior among animals, that. Most drive their helpless away from the group. Up to the hills. Or out on the ice. Or into the streets.
�LMBoyd 11.03.03

deepest debtor
Thanks to President George Bush�s $600bn budget deficit (although he actually inherited a surplus from Bill Clinton), a persistent trade deficit with Asia and near zero savings rates, US net debt is growing, requiring daily inflows of billions of foreign-sourced dollars to cover the difference. These public and private flows are invested in sovereign debt instruments or the equity markets. As the US Federal Reserve noted in its latest quarterly report, foreigners now own 38% of US Treasury securities, more than twice the amount a decade ago.

This means that the US has mobilised an ever-greater share of world savings to finance US consumption, economic growth, living standards and military expansion. Most of those savings are from East Asia. Japan, China, the newly-industrialised countries and middle-income countries, such as Thailand, have accumulated vast resources that are not locally consumed or used for productive purposes but invested in dollar paper assets. Flows into these assets keep US interest rates low and boost the value of the dollar, allowing the US to import cheaply from the rest of the world. East Asia finances US debt in return for continued unrestricted access to the US market. This arrangement suits Asian exporters but inhibits the use of resources in other ways.
�Philip S Golub/Le Monde diplomatique Oct. 2003

extreme makeover
...post-World War II Japan, when young women had industrial-strength transformer coolant injected into their breasts to meet the standards of American GIs.
The beginning is the 1960s, when topless showgirls in Las Vegas had liquid silicone pumped into them to make falsies for the naked eye.
The beginning is also the 1970s and '80s, after silicone was packaged in gel form and promoted as a cure, in the words of the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, for small breasts that were "deformities" and "really a disease."
� Ellen Goodman/Boston Globe 11.02.03

The Health of All
Instead of getting preventive care or treating problems when they are manageable, families are forced to wait until their loved ones are so sick that something must be done.
Doctors and nurses see many children in emergency rooms with serious illnesses that could have been contained if their parents had affordable insurance.
It's not unusual to see seniors who have stopped taking lifesaving medication because the cost is simply too high.
�Gary Payinda and Luisa Blue/LATimes/Common Dreams 11.01.03

Ω{Aside from the essential moral issue (society provides health care versus society stands back and watches while Darwinian struggle decides who's fit) the immediate dilemma, as presented by the local press, is: the desperately fighting-to-survive corporations are being buried in escalating health insurance costs, and so must strip expenses in order to remain healthy and viable themselves.
They do this with essentials like gas too. The logic seems to be, transportation costs increase, consequently the price of doing business goes up, therefore wages can't.
Even though the wage earners, as mini-corporations, have seen their own transportation costs increase at least as much if not more.
Not only are corporations seen as individual legal entities, with the constitutional protections provided to American citizens, they're increasingly being seen as individuals who are more valuable than the rest of us.
It's like this government debt stuff, there's a taboo in the middle of it, you're not supposed to talk about exactly who the money is owed to. It's just debt. Sacred. End of story.
So the current argument is, or seems to be, that the health of the corporations is more important than the health of their employees.}

Ω{Desperate intensity on the "Saddam's behind it" tip.
It's absolutely vital that the core majority of Americans believe the Chinook was brought down by an evil enemy that already existed, before 'we' invaded liberated occupied. Because the alternative is patriotic resistance, the defense of their homeland by an attacked people.
Where does it go from here? Open honest debate?
Is it really conceivable that an American withdrawal under UN mandate might happen? How caught are the players in their roles? Doesn't it really rest on the true motives for the invasion, and what were those motives? Could it be that oil wasn't it? That oil's only a collateral benefit?
How many Israeli soldiers are in Iraq right now?}

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

in Pravda

at San Jose State

in The Jerusalem Post

in the Moscow Times via the Washington Post

at Business Week

in the Telegraph UK

at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Cross-gender pat searches
The new policy introduced this year allows male guards to conduct unsupervised searches of female prisoners which involve touching the breast and crotch areas -- a procedure that was banned in VSPW in 1998 after years of complaints by prisoners of groping and other sexual abuse by male guards.

Research has shown that pat down searches and other intimate contact involving male guards can be particularly traumatizing for women prisoners, many of whom have histories of being physically or sexually abused before their incarceration.

In California, as in many other US states, female prisoners are routinely supervised by male guards, a practice which is contrary to international standards...
�Amnesty International 10.31.03

Ted Rall11.01.03