fter months of Senate hearings and eight Pentagon investigations, it is obvious that the administration does not intend to hold any high-ranking official accountable for the nightmare at Abu Ghraib. It was pretty clear yesterday that Senator John Warner's well-intentioned hearings of the Armed Services Committee are not going to do it either.

James Schlesinger, who was picked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to head a civilian investigation of Abu Ghraib and seems determined to repay the favor, gave unhelpful testimony that included an incredible statement that there was no policy "that encourages abuse." He told that to the same senators who had heard earlier from a panel of generals that the Central Intelligence Agency was still refusing to account for its practice of hiding dozens of prisoners from the Red Cross. Mr. Rumsfeld personally approved that violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties on at least one occasion.

At the hearing, Mr. Warner asked Mr. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, another former secretary of defense, to be specific about their report's talk of "institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels." Neither man had any intention of doing that.

NYTimes 10.Sep.04

�Deus le volt!"

"We are hunters and we are trained to go for the heart.
The heart of the problem is in Washington."

�Here are the main findings of the 18-chapter, 1,400-page Arctic Climate Impact Assessment:

• The Arctic climate is warming rapidly now, and much bigger changes are projected, with average temperatures rising three to nine degrees C over the next 100 years;
• Arctic warming and its consequences have world-wide implications, possibly slowing the ocean circulation that helps distribute heat around the world;
• Arctic vegetation zones may shift, moving the tree line northward;
• Retreating sea ice will reduce habitat for polar bear, walrus, seals and marine birds and change the conditions for fisheries, affecting species diversity;
• Coastal communities and facilities face more exposure to storms and thawing coastal permafrost;
• Shipping opportunities and access to resources will increase, raising new sovereignty and security issues;
• Thawing ground will disrupt transportation, buildings and other infrastructure;
• Inuit and other indigenous people face major economic and cultural impacts;
• Elevated ultraviolet radiation levels will affect people, plants and animals, with the current generation of Arctic young people receiving a 30 per cent higher dose of UV radiation, which can lead to cancer and other health problems;
• Other factors, such as chemical pollution, oil spills and over-fishing may interact to cause other impacts.

�
Scientists drilling ice cores in Greenland have recovered what appear to be plant remains from nearly 3 km below the surface of the ice.

Team members said reddish clumps of material, found in the muddy ice in the cores, contain what look like pine needles or blades of grass.
These finds could be the first organic material to be recovered from a deep ice core drilling project. Scientists think the material could be many millions of years old.
The plant material was recovered between the ice sheet and the bedrock at a drilling site in central Greenland, by a team with the North Greenland Ice Core Project.
The presence of plant material suggests the Greenland ice sheet formed very fast.

�
...last weekend in Nuuk, a gathering of Arctic parliamentarians got a troubling preview of the environmental, health and social impacts that an upward swing of temperatures in the North will cause.

�It�s happening now, and it�s been happening for decades, and it has consequences for the whole world,� Robert Corell, chair of the ACIA, told the group.
Corell urged MPs and indigenous leaders from Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden to move out of �the valley of indecision and delay� and convince governments to adopt policies and programs that will help curb the heat-catching greenhouse gases that contribute to warming the earth.
That task will be �like trying to put brakes on a supertanker.�
No one from the U.S., which supported the Arctic Council�s 2000 Barrow Declaration that called for this climate assessment and policy recommendation, was in Nuuk.
Also absent were any MPs, elected territorial officials, or even bureaucrats from Canada�s North, with the exception of Jack Anawak, Canada�s new Arctic ambassador.

Nunatsiaq News

"Women and men have died"

Dr Khamis al-Saad, general director of Ramadi hospital, told Aljazeera that 11 people, including a woman and children, were killed and another 18 wounded under US fire on Monday.
Ambulances and medical teams were targeted by US snipers in different areas of Ramadi, particularly near hospitals for women and children, al-Saad said.
Two ambulance drivers and members of medical teams on board the vehicles were also killed, he said.
Medical staff and patients inside the hospitals were targeted and a number of them were shot in the head, the general director said.
"Situation in general is unstable and deteriorating so I call on the government and NGOs to intervene as clashes are occurring every day," al-Saad said.
"Our medical institutions are receiving casualties but medical supplies are not enough," he said.
Earlier in the day, US forces launched air strikes on Falluja, killing up to 18 people, including women, children and an ambulance driver.

Aljazeera 14.Sep.04

practically anything can happen

Simple minded people�and that means all of us most of the time�automatically assume that what people utter has a prima facie validity. We�re well aware that people can lie and misrepresent things, of course; but the default on our program is trust and it takes energy to listen critically. You have to do something. For this reason, even those of us who know better are influenced by the endless repetition of false information. Propaganda works and what makes it effective is repetition, not cogency. Since the radical right has the means to get its message endlessly repeated�think of the Swift Boat campaign�truth or falsity becomes irrelevant and even the opponents of the administration will end up doubting themselves about matters that are long past reasonable question. It is the sheerest vanity to think that one is immune to the spin. You aren�t just being partisan, dear readers. In fact things are worse than you think.

inanis et vacua 13.Sep.04

Russell Crowe was on Actor's Studio a while back. He was brilliantly human, humble and genuine, eminently lovable, and yes like everyone I have way too much confidence in my ability to judge character, but as good as he is, he's not that diabolical an actor.
I was doing the dishes and I can't stand doing the dishes start to finish without a break, so I sat down and turned it on. I was in the habit of watching Actor's Studio but I wasn't going to that night, because I didn't like Russell Crowe. Something negative about him. Keep in mind that I'd never seen him in anything, never read an interview with him.
I realized part way through the program that I'd been brainwashed, obviously brainwashed. We watched The Insider a few weeks ago, Crowe and Pacino, and I mentioned to a friend how impressive Crowe's art was, true acting, rather than just the magnification of persoanlity and face that a lot of celebrities trade on.
She said she didn't like Russell Crowe; did she mean as an actor? she said no, that he was probably a fine actor, but as a person she didn't like him. I asked her why and she got sort of vague.
How many people are there out there who have this?
What is it about? Did Russell Crowe piss somebody off?

"Clearly within the rules of engagement..."

A television journalist was shot dead as he made a live broadcast from Baghdad yesterday when United States helicopters fired on a crowd that had gathered round the burning wreckage of an American armoured vehicle.
Mazen al-Tumeizi, a Palestinian working for Al-Arabiya, one of the main Arab satellite television channels, was among 12 people - all believed to be civilians - killed in the incident on Haifa Street.
[...]
Tumeizi was describing the incident on camera when two helicopter gunships were seen flying down the street and opening fire. Tumeizi was hit by a bullet and doubled over, shouting: I'm dying, I'm dying." About 50 people were wounded, the health ministry said, among them a Reuters cameraman and an Iraqi reporter for the Guardian.
Through the day, United States officers offered contradictory accounts of the incident and ordered an investigation.

Adrian Blomfield/news.telegraph 13.Sep.04

Foyled Again, by Big Tobacco
Spin of The Day

In the words of the industry itself, the campaign was aimed at "promoting cigarettes and protecting them from these and other attacks," by "creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it, and advocating the public's right to smoke, without actually urging them to take up the practice."

How Tobacco and PR Grew Up Together
disinfopedia

It's possible to be, as I am, bitterly opposed to the manipulation of the general public by the inhuman corporate mind, and still not condemn tobacco or its use. We have no way of measuring what tobacco usage would have been had the corporate/capitalist takeover of public consciousness, through advertising, not happened.
People were coerced into smoking, brainwashed into it; it's the coercion that was wrong. Interesting that the feeble, and anonymous, success of the anti-smoking campaigners has been entirely the result of using those same brainwashing techniques against the practice of smoking tobacco. Interesting that the far more deadly use of gasoline remains untouched.
What I'm trying to say is the tobacco companies have committed criminal acts, and are culpable - they've murdered thousands, even millions of people - but it isn't tobacco that's at the heart of the crime.
Tobacco is a sacred herb to the original inhabitants of North America. Its casual use isn't problematic.
The real evil is in the tools of the brainwash, which emerge untouched, again. Which have been in fact employed by the same people who feel so smug about their great victory against the evil herb.
This same smugness shows up again in the "anti-drug" campaigners who ridicule teenage pot-users while the disaffected kids, the ones whose radar still works, who aren't buying the increasingly evil party line, are drugged into pharmaceutical insensibility by corporate-owned professionals.

Although the opposition remains stuck mainly with the power to criticise, it gained a loud new voice with the stunning election win by Hong Kong's top protester, "Longhair" Leung Kwok-hung, who is known for burning flags and raising a ruckus in his trademark Che Guevara T-shirt.
Several hours after Leung had been declared a winner he launched his latest demonstration, chanting slogans outside government offices this afternoon.

�����

"Long Hair"

The clumsy police exercise came as New York-based Human Rights Watch released a 40-page report saying that Chinese intimidation aimed at swaying the vote had produced a "toxic" atmosphere over recent months, with China questioning the "patriotism" of its local critics and fears of violence rising. "The past 12 months have seen the most worrying attacks on free expression and association since the 1997 handover," said Brad Adams, head of the organisation's Asia section.

"This appears to be a direct result of Beijing's desire to control the political situation in Hong Kong."

Among the incidents cited were the resignation of popular radio talk-show hosts after they received direct threats from figures linked to mainland authorities and their offices and businesses were vandalised.

Some voters went on radio to report they were being pressured by business associates and employers to vote for pro-Beijing candidates.

Hamish McDonald/The Age(AU) 11.Sep.04
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tophoto: Sinopix

Persons of Interest

He was arrested on September 11, 2001 while stopped at a traffic light in Philadelphia. "Where are you from?" Nabil remembers the officer asking him. "Israel," Nabil answered. The officer asked Nabil if he was Israeli or Arabic. "I said I'm Arabic, and they said you're under arrest." Nabil was detained for one year and seventeen days. He was never charged with anything. His wife and children were all deported back to Palestine. After he was released Nabil got a working permit and a job as a contractor. "I am trying to get my life back together," he said, "But it's hard. It was hard for me in jail. Now my main concern is my family." Nabil was re-arrested in April 2003 when police in Syracuse, NY pulled over a speeding car in which he was a passenger. He was held in a Batavia, NY jail and then deported to the West Bank, where he was reunited with his wife and four children.

The Documentary Campaign May.15.04

Democracy Gets Fired Upon in Najaf
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Genocide In America
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Retired Brass Call for Independent Torture Probe

"The most senior lawyers in the Department of Justice, the White House, Department of Defense, and the vice president's office sought to justify actions that violate the most basic rights of all human beings," according to the jurists, who also included eight past presidents of the American Bar Association (ABA).

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Swatting at Flies

Nader's back; Kerry may be over.

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Beat Within

In the meantime, keep in mind that the same people who are teaching us to fear murderers, drug dealers and thieves are perpetuating the same damage by ripping kids out of their communities, subjecting them to more violence and sending them right back out. They've got people in the Assembly scared to push for what's right because they want to continue doing what they're doing, and that's teaching kids to be violent adults.

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civilians caught in raging battles
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"there is no distinct, native American criminal class--except Congress."
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He didn't know if the strike caused any civilian casualties.
"We are going to apply the necessary pressure to make sure that we are able to root out the enemy."
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Israel withdraws

Among the eight dead were four fighters and four civilians, including a 9-year-old boy.
Children and teens often run into the streets during Israeli raids, throwing stones at tanks, and adults rarely send them home despite the grave danger. Thirty-five of the wounded were 16 and younger, 90 per cent of them suffering from bullet wounds, said Dr Manar al-Farra, director of the Al Awda Hospital in Beit Lahiya.

"...if bin-Laden and the rest were so angry at the internal freedom and democracy of "infidel" Western nations, then why were Canada, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, New Zealand, and Switzerland (to name a few non-Islamic democratic states) right to be much less worried about major attacks from al Qaeda?"

A chance, perhaps, to stand down our entrenched psychic and ideological defenses, to understand how and why we cause ourselves and others pain, why millions across the world resent us (many to the point where they could applaud 9/11) and how we might stop the vicious circle of injury at home and abroad. Nine-eleven, I wanted to believe, was a chance to face our inner demons and choose sanity, to lose our self-absorbed innocence in ways that might permit us to lose our manufactured innocence about how much harm our policy makers and "democratic American System, capitalism" (as Tom Brokaw described the dominant US system of socioeconomic management and hierarchy on 9/11) have been causing others, and to drop our longstanding sense of special historical superiority to the rest of the world.

As Arundhati Roy has noted,

"the US empire rests on a grisly foundation: the massacre of millions of indigenous people, the stealing of their lands, and following this, the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of black people from Africa to work that land.Thousands died on the seas while they were being shipped like caged cattle."

Further:

"In the best-selling version of popular myth as history, U.S. "goodness" peaked during World War II.Lost in the din of trumpet sound and angel song is the fact that when fascism was in full stride in Europe, the U.S. government actually looked away...Drowned out in by the noisy hosannas is [America's] most barbaric, in fact the single most savage act the world has ever witnessed: the dropping of the atomic bomb on the civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The war was nearly over.The hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who were killed, the countless others who were crippled by cancers for generations to come were not a threat to world peace.They were civilians.Just as the victims of the World Trade Center bombings were civilians.Just as the hundreds of thousands of people dying in Iraq because of US-led sanctions are civilians....Since the Second World War, the United States has been war with or attacked, among other countries, Korea, Guatemala, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan.This list should also include the U.S. government's covert operations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the coups it has engineered, and the dictators it has armed and supported. It should include Israel's U.S.-backed war on Lebanon, in which thousands were killed.It should include the key role America has played in the conflict in the Middle East, in which thousands have died fighting Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.It should include America's role in the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in which over one million people were killed.It should include the embargos and sanctions that have led directly and indirectly to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, most visibly in Iraq.Put it all together, and it sounds very much as though there has been a World War III, and that the U.S. government was (or is) one of its chief protagonists."

[...]Nine-eleven, I wanted to believe, was a chance to face our inner demons and choose sanity, to lose our self-absorbed innocence in ways that might permit us to lose our manufactured innocence about how much harm our policy makers and "democratic American System, capitalism" (as Tom Brokaw described the dominant US system of socioeconomic management and hierarchy on 9/11) have been causing others, and to drop our longstanding sense of special historical superiority to the rest of the world.

Paul Street/ZNET 10.Sep.04

Brokaw represents a lot of decent people. The problem is the truth undermines the only thing holding their lives together. So they can't afford to acknowledge it, even when they see it. Capitalism and democracy have been conflated, been made to seem synonymous, but it's just the opposite. Capitalism must be set aside when it's time to vote democratically.
The rest of the time there is no "people", only individuals competing against each other for individual gain. Then, when it's election time, the "people" are expected to set aside all that individual competition and act for the common good.
And afterwards, go right back to the dog-eat-dog of business-as-usual.
So, not surprisingly, most people act as they've been taught and encouraged to, and vote from their pockets, selfishly, with no regard for the common good at all.
Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic, not easily compatible, systems. It isn't democracy that's hated and attacked by the militants and fanatics who are reacting to America - it's capitalism, or more accurately, what capitalism has created out of the raw materials of democracy in the United States.

o
photo: Stan Honda/AFP

It's the anti-4th of July. The date from which the opposite will always be remembered as having begun. No more freedom, no more independence, the date when the truth started its long unstoppable climb into public view.
Osama ben Laden didn't do it.
"They" didn't do it.
And "we" didn't do it to ourselves.
It's now a contest to see if the poets can name it, what happened, what really happened, and who really did it, before it's too late.
Who did it, who they are, and why.
They're smarter than us, generally. And more powerful, the way a teenager with a stolen key to the gun closet is more powerful than his mother.
The fear you have when you see the lion sink its teeth into the neck of the deer, you should feel that now. It's like that. Predator. Prey.
They're smarter than us but that's like size, like speed, like anything, it doesn't always make the difference.
Courage, cunning, chance, grace, things that don't have names anymore that we once knew as constant, each in its time - birds don't need size to not get eaten, they have wings and camoflage, and quickness when they need it.

Anything and anyone who tries to use your fear to make you do what they want is your enemy.

photo-KarelPrinsloo/AP
Sudanese refugees, Touloum, Eastern Chad

In 2001, we attacked Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and to prevent the Taliban from allegedly flooding the world with heroin. Yet Bin Laden remains free, while the heroin ban imposed by the Taliban has been replaced by its very opposite, a surge in opium production, fostered by the warlords who rule the country. As for Sierra Leone, the United Nations human development report for 2004, published on July 15, which measures overall living standards around the world, puts that beneficiary of western intervention in 177th place out of 177, an august position it has continued to occupy ever since our boys went in: Sierra Leone is literally the most miserable place on earth. So much for Blair's promise of a "new era for Africa".

The absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil. For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be "no blood for oil" in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. As oil pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west not only has a clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor.

John Laughland/Guardian UK 02.Aug.04

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link countercurrents
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The scorched earth: oil and war in Sudan

Vietnam Veterans Against the War:

It all started in 1967, with six Vietnam veterans marching together in a peace demonstration. Now, thirty-seven years later, VVAW is still going strong-- continuing its fight for peace, justice, and the rights of all veterans.

Explore these pages; see what we've done, what we do, and why we do it. The struggle continues, perhaps these days more than ever. VVAW has never stopped working to protect the welfare of those who served their country.

Will you join us?

"When you got home, you co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and wrote "The New Soldier," which denounced those of us who served -- and were still serving -- on the battlefields of a thankless war. Worst of all, John, you then accused me -- and all of us who served in Vietnam -- of committing terrible crimes and atrocities."

"Even Jane Fonda apologized. Will you, John?"

Oliver North/Creators 27.Aug.04

There's a conspiracy here. To get me to vote for Kerry, who seems sane and human by contrast with most of the aliens he's up against. It makes me forget how flawed and dangerous his actual positions are, how "in the pocket" his vibe is. Compared to people like North, Kerry seems almost heroic.
Just on the text, what North does in this column, and he does it very well, is make serious-sounding charges, that Kerry has accused the noble warriors of the American military of crimes and atrocities, which Kerry did, at one point, long ago, and some of us are still doing.
But that's all North says. He accuses Kerry of accusing him, and the entire US military, but then he doesn't deny or refute, he doesn't answer the accusations.
There's something I know personally all too well, that strange logical place the mind inhabits when it's masking intolerable guilt - you can't admit to what's real, it's overwhelming, you'll break down, you won't be able to function, and you're in crisis - you have to function.
So you sort through what's available and construct a reality that fits what you need, and you live there. Within the borders of that personal reality you can be very logical indeed.
North lives in a world in which he's a hero, but it's a world he built out of pieces of this one, and it's the pieces he leaves out that make him dangerous, a source of contagion.
It's irrefutable that there were crimes and atrocities committed by the US military in Viet Nam, and the safer and far more criminal covering-up that took place, and has taken place since, is irrefutable as well.
The inhuman actions of American-sponsored "soldiers" in Central America during the 1980's, for which North is personally accountable, isn't as well-known in the US, by its citizenry, but only because the heartless power North has served all these years is still in control of the historical record.
It's a larger version of the mental illness North himself displays, an illness whose symptoms are rigid self-control, paranoid vigilance, and the silent disappearance of evidence.
These are viruses he spews, cells of denial breaking open and spilling into thousands of weaker, susceptible minds.

Kerry's flawed, but North is dangerously insane.

"...our nation�s leaders have been corrupted by special interests dollars and no longer represent the interests of their constituents..."








to be is"Send me into the lion's den"

Doris Haddock, New Hampshire candidate for U.S. Senate

"...no other individuals were present at the time of the strike."

Speaking from the town's main hospital on Thursday, Dr Mushtaq Talib said three women and five children were killed and another 15 were injured.
The victims, from just three families, were taking shelter in a couple of houses that were completely destroyed during the third successive night of air strikes, locals said.
Families living in the northern Nuwab al-Dhubat quarter were particularly shaken after the attack after whole houses became holes in the ground.
Local journalists report that the areas attacked are not only crowded, but that no armed men were in the district at the time of the attack.
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The humanitarian situation is also reported to be deteriorating fast as hospitals in the area continue to suffer major shortages in medical supplies.
Dr Talib showed journalists bloodied children laying on hospital beds from the previous night's attack.

Aljazeera 09.Sep.04

Craig Venter continues his alien endeavors apace.
________

Nestl� Microbe (Lactobacillus johnsonii)This bacterium lives in our intestines and may protect against harmful microbes. The food company Nestl�, which sequenced the organism, uses it in a yogurt-like dairy product called LC1.

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Swiss giant Nestle, the world's largest human-food company, will soon be tops in the canine and feline markets as well if its deal to buy Ralston Purina is completed.
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Dreyer's is the largest manufacturer and distributor of ice cream and ice cream products in the United States. The company sells ice cream under the Dreyer's brand name in 14 western states in the United States and parts of Asia and under the Edy's brand name elsewhere in the United States. In addition, the company sells ice cream under the Dreamery, Starbucks and Godiva brands.
���

The Federal Trade Commission has authorized its staff to seek a preliminary injunction to block the merger of Nestl� Holdings, Inc. and Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Inc., pending trial. In June 2002, Nestl� and Dreyer's agreed to combine their ice cream businesses in a deal valued at about $2.8 billion. (FTC March 4, 2003)
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U.S. antitrust enforcers on Wednesday approved Nestle's takeover of Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream Inc. on the condition that the companies divest some ice cream brands and distribution assets, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said.
The FTC's five commissioners voted unanimously to clear the deal, with the companies promising to sell the Dreamery, Godiva and Whole Fruit sorbet brands to a unit of CoolBrands International Inc. to assuage antitrust concerns.
The approval comes about four months after the FTC threatened to sue to block the takeover because of concerns that it would eliminate U.S. competition and raise prices for top-tier ice creams like Nestle's Haagen Dazs and Dreyer's Godiva.
_______

"Your politics are complex," he muttered in embarrassment.

Collins, who was a partner in the discovery of the gene mutation responsible for cystic fibrosis, defines himself to be a "practicing Christian." He wears a ring that bears a large cross on his finger. How does he live with the fact that his discovery is now used to justify abortion of genetically diseased fetuses?

"I find it troubling," he says. "But I certainly would defend the desire of couples to have the information, and would certainly be uncomfortable with the state stepping in and telling them what to do with that information. At the same time, my dream in the years when I searched for the gene along with colleagues in Toronto, was to cure the disease. That dream hasn't been realized yet.

"Often people do not know who shot them or blew them up."