Kenya's Crisis
by Tavia Nyong'o
Imagine that George W. Bush had himself sworn in on day three of the 2000 Florida recount in a White House ceremony so hastily thrown together they forgot to play the national anthem. Then imagine he declared an immediate ban on any further political rallies or live television broadcasts contesting his coronation.

 

This scene should give Americans an approximation of what has happened in Kenya since December 29 and a sense of why the situation is so explosive. The roots of violence and chaos lie not in tribalism but in a bold power grab by a tight clique around the president.

Kenya: Stable Democracy or Meltdown?
by Immanuel Wallerstein
On December 27, 2007, there were presidential and parliamentary elections in Kenya. The outside world was largely indifferent. Then suddenly the headlines spoke of ethnic violence on a large scale.

 

 

 

What took place?

 

 

Kucinich Exits and Democrats Diminished
by John Nichols
The media managers of the 2008 presidential contest worked for months to get Dennis Kucinich off the stage and out of the running. And they have finally succeeded.

 

The Ohio Congressman says he is now "transitioning out of the presidential campaign" and into a tough Democratic primary race for reelection to his Cleveland-area U.S. House seat.

Paramount and “The Kite Runner”– One Manifestation of Goodness in the Spirit(s) of Our Times      
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
Starting in late September, I began writing about “The Spirit(s) of Our Times.” In each instance, the emphasis was on the dark side of that spiritual picture. And it is indeed important –especially in times like ours– to become aware of how evil and destructive spirits operate in the world and how they manifest themselves in our cultural system.

It is also important, however, to understand the workings of the forces of goodness. America has darkened, but the spirits of our times include good ones as well, shaping the course of events in constructive ways.

Here’s one small piece of the American picture where, as I see it, one can discern some of those benign workings.

Katrina, Two Years Later
by Bill Quigley
One. Build and rebuild community.

When disaster hits and life is wrecked, you immediately seem to be on your own. Isolation after a disaster is a recipe for powerlessness and depression. Family, community, church, work associations are all important --get them up and working as fast as possible. People will stand up and fight, but we need communities to do it.

 

Prize women --they are the first line of community builders. Guys will talk and fight and often grab the spotlight, but women will help everyone and do whatever it takes to protect families and communities.

by Brian Barder

Anyone under the widely shared illusion that NATO's attack on Serbia in 1999 over Kosovo permanently resolved the problem of Kosovo's relationship with the rest of Serbia needs to have another think.  The veteran peace-making miracle man, Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and accomplished godfather of UN solutions to intractable problems, is shortly to announce his proposals for the future status of Kosovo, having consulted at length with the governments of Russia, the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo, and many others. 

The forecast is that (after yet another round of protracted 'consultations') he will propose for Kosovo a form of internationally policed quasi-independence from Serbia — but without any specific mention of the i-word; probably also without any entitlement to membership of the UN, other countries then free to decide whether to 'recognise' Kosovo as a state or not. This, like any other kind of severance of Kosovo from Serbia, will be bitterly and perhaps violently opposed by the great majority of the people of Serbia, and (not unnaturally) by the small, beleaguered Serbian minority still clinging on in Kosovo.  For there are still some Serbs in Kosovo despite the virtual ethnic cleansing that followed the departure of the Serbian army and police in 1999 and the installation of the NATO-led international régime in Kosovo under the revised settlement programme skilfully negotiated by — you guessed! — Ahtisaari, with discreet help from the Russians and the Americans, after the NATO bombing had failed to bring the Serbs to heel.

Senator Edward Kennedy Released from Hospital
by CBC News
Accompanied by friends and family, Senator Edward Kennedy slowly walked out of a Massachusetts hospital Wednesday, a day after being diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor that experts say is almost certainly fatal.

 

A crowd of well-wishers applauded the 76-year-old Democrat as emerged from the doors of Massachusetts General in Boston. He smiled, waved back and gave a thumbs-up. His dogs greeted him at the hospital door.

Kenyan President Offers Unity Government Opposition rejects idea
by CBC News
Kenya's president says he's ready to form "a government of national unity" to help resolve disputed election results that sparked deadly riots in his country over the past week, but the opposition leader is standing firm on his demands to rerun the Dec. 27 vote.

President Mwai Kibaki made the offer Saturday during a meeting with the leading U.S. diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer.

KOSOVO, VENEZUELA, BOLIVIA, ECUADOR, ETC.

by Charles Hardy

I watched four teenagers burst out laughing as they read the headline, “U.S. mistakenly kills nine civilians.” It was a great example of a gross understatement. There was nothing new in this “news” article about the U.S.’s war in Iraq: simply the tip of an iceberg of dead civilians.

The state allowed he be held in house arrest pending the outcome of the growing scandal hearing. Shreiber, a Canadian citizen, has fought the extradition proceedings launched by Germany for his alleged involvement with political crimes committed in that country more than a decade ago. Here's how Pacific Free Press covered the latest press discovery of the connections between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Shreiber back in July, and a link to a 2001 Gorilla Radio interview I did with journalist and author, Stevie Cameron, who co-authored the ground-breaking book on the Shreiber-Mulroney link in, 'The Last Amigo.' 

 

Tobacco and Hollywood
By RALPH NADER

Among the greatest unsung public health advances of recent times is progress made against the global cigarette industry.

In the United States, cigarette smoking is finally on the decline. The courts have ruled the tobacco industry to be "racketeers." Smokefree spaces, including not just workplaces but restaurants and bars, are proliferating, reducing the harms of second-hand smoke and encouraging millions to quit. States are raising cigarette taxes, reducing smoking and raising funds for important public health programs.

Omar Khadr: Supreme Court of Canada Ruling
by C. L. Cook

Almost six years imprisoned in the American gulags and Omar Khadr, the fifteen year old Canadian and sole survivor of an American military assault on a village in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, is finally getting his day in "court."

 

Of course it is not a court that any living in pre-Bushian times would recognize as such: there are no rights granted the "detainee" the rest of us have come to take as granted, like: the right to face your accuser(s); the right to see the evidence against you; the right to security of the person (habeas corpus); the right to lawyer/ advocate/ council -client confidentiality; the right to an open trial; the right to be judged by a jury of your peers. 

 

But, there may be a small ray of hope for the young "terrorist" in the form of a newly handed down ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada.

 

The problem is: the Canadian government is fighting the nation's highest court, and there is no indication the American authorities holding Khadr these last six years will pay a good God-damned bit of notice to anything the Supreme Court says.  

Please get involved. Parks Canada must be told that wild places must remain wild, and that lethal control of a native species is unacceptable.

Watch the video and read the trancript (after the flip):

I think it is - them against us, peace loving citizens who are opposed by the elite that govern them. The majority of people don't want war, they want to provide for their families, live in peace and recognize themselves in each other. Their focus is simply to making a living; but the governing elite and has different interests, it has to manage the the powers given to them. 
It is always the governing elite that by deception needs to persuade the people into starting wars already planned. As soon as 'the people' discover - through researchers like Olbermann - that they should focus on the vertical struggle and not on the horizontal, things can start to change for the better. There is an enormous human and material potential which is now being wasted on wars and paralyzed by fear that could otherwise be liberated and put to good use. This could redistribute the great wealth there is in this world, which is now largely wasted and rendered ineffective because it is out of balance.

Sceptical After Second Shrine Attack
by Ali al-Fadhily
The second bombing of the Shiite shrine of al-Askari in Samarra, Iraq, last week brought reprisal attacks, but it also brought solidarity against the occupiers.

The golden shrine, located in downtown Samarra which is 125 km north of Baghdad, was first bombed on Feb. 22, 2006. The attack, which nearly totally destroyed the main dome, sparked massive violence. Over 1,300 people were killed in revenge attacks in the few tumultuous days that followed the bombing, and hundreds of thousands were displaced.

 

"I am not sure who is doing this and I do not have the habit of speculating, but now I, and most Iraqis, are sure it is just a conspiracy to divide Iraqis into Shiite and Sunnis. All this was planned and paid for by people outside our country and community."

Another U.S. Military Assault on Media
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD, Feb 23 (IPS) - Iraqi journalists are outraged over yet another U.S. military raid on the media. U.S. soldiers raided and ransacked the offices of the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists (ISJ) in central Baghdad Tuesday this week. Ten armed guards were arrested, and 10 computers and 15 small electricity generators kept for donation to families of killed journalists were seized.

 

"Just at the point when the Syndicate achieves formal recognition for its work as an independent body of professionals, the American military carries out a brutal and unprovoked assault. Anyone working for media that does not endorse U.S. policy and actions could now be at risk."

Lawmaker Confirms Kurd-Shia Clashes in Baghdad
by Ali al-Fadhily
A May 29 IPS report on clashes between Kurdish Peshmerga troops and militiamen of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad has been confirmed by an Iraqi member of Parliament, representing the Sunni-led Iraqi Accordance Front (Al-Tawafuq).

Speaking on condition of strict anonymity inside the heavily- fortified Green Zone of central Baghdad where the Iraqi government meets, the MP told IPS that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "sold Kirkuk in exchange for Kurdish support for his collapsing government, and other matters such as not being in the way of Shiite militias in Baghdad."

 

For those of you who have been concerned about my dad, I am writing to update you on his condition and to ask for your help again.

After visiting my dad in prison, I have observed: They do not feed him nearly enough; he has no privacy; he works as a janitor everyday from 7-4; he is allowed few personal belongings, and; he lives with real criminals, (duh)! 

 

However, despite the negative conditions he is under, his spirit remains positive, and he retains his hope in coming justice.

Just the idea of President Bush’s scolding Kerry and telling him that "words are important" is beyond belief. This, after all, is the guy who for five years has been warning Americans about various "nookular" threats facing us. A guy who has his every utterance scripted for him and yet still manages to screw up his lines with regularity. A guy who had to have a cueing device hidden in his ear canal during his debates with that selfsame Kerry, so he'd avoid just standing at the lectern and saying "duh" in response to questions.

 

 

But let's not stop there. Kerry himself was right in character. He clearly didn't write his own joke, and was too slow-witted to get the joke he was supposed to deliver, which reportedly was that if students didn't work and study hard might end up someday being ignorant incurious leaders like President Bush, and getting the country into another mess like Iraq. It wasn't much of a joke, but by bunging it up, Kerry revealed his Boston Brahman snobbishness, saying instead that if students didn't study hard, they'd end up in Iraq--the clear implication being that he thinks that the US troops fighting and dying in Iraq are there because they’re uneducated.

Kerry, the candidate who voted for the war but opposes the war, who voted for funding for the war and voted against it, is now trying to say that the joke he told is not the joke that was written for him, but that's not going to work. He certainly should have understood instantly what he was saying when he said it, and realized how smarmy it was. What we're left with is the unavoidable conclusion that Kerry doesn't know anything about what he's saying when he says it. Like Bush, he's just reading a script, and like Bush, he's bungling it badly.

Senators Kyl and Lieberman and their Stealth War Authorization
by Dave Lindorff
Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) want the US to attack Iran, but because they know most Americans know that is a crazy idea at a time that the US is already bogged down in a losing war in Iraq, they want to authorize this disastrous expansion of the conflict secretly.

 

 

Flash Update!

 

 

 

 

That’s why, instead of introducing a war authorizing bill in the Senate, they have introduced a war-authorizing amendment, attached to the latest Defense Authorization Bill currently working its way through Congress
Imagine that.

 

 

Admit it: You don’t know where the !@#$% Tajikistan is
by Greg Palast

Or Kyrgyzstan. Or Turkmenistan. But as your kids will be fighting there among the oil pipes, you should kiss Ted Rall’s crazy ass for going there first - and getting it all down in a book of dead-on cartoons and reportage, Silk Road to Ruin.

Rall almost didn’t make it back. The Taliban who was supposed to execute Rall spoke English - the gunman picked it up as an NYU grad student. As happens when two guys from New York get together, they talked about New York women. Rall told his executioner that you could learn a lot about women by looking at their legs. The Talib said he looks at their eyes. “Not like you got much choice,” Ted opined, noting the draped figures nearby.

KATRINA WAS A TERRORIST ATTACK: REMEMBERING NEW ORLEANS
by Jack Random
Nearly four years after the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an unknown third target, there was a second terrorist attack and the conspiracy to cover up the truth was no less determined.  

Katrina was a category three hurricane that missed New Orleans yet the devastation was complete.  The lowlands of the Ninth Ward, Chantilly and St. Bernard’s Parrish were buried under a wall of water, hundreds died, hundreds more would never be counted, and tens of thousands were scattered across the land like third world refugees.  

Debating the Primacy of The Pro-Israel Lobby

by James Petras and Norman Finkelstein

There is little question in anybody’s mind about the special relation between Israel and the United States. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid to the tune of more than $3 billion dollars a year, plus miscellaneous additions like surplus weaponry, debt waivers and other perks. Israel is the only country that receives its entire aid package in the beginning of the fiscal year allowing it to accrue interest on it during the year. It is the only country which is allowed to spend up to 25% of its aid outside of the United States, placing such expenditures outside US control.

Apart from financial support, the United States has offered unwavering support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, and has systematically supported Israel’s refusal to make any effective peace negotiations or peace agreements. It has vetoed countless UN resolutions seeking to bring Israel into compliance with international law. It has allowed Israel to develop nuclear weapons and not to sign the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty and most recently it strongly supported Israel’s attack on Lebanon in July of 2006.

Defining Racism
by Kim Petersen
The neocon press is not merely confined to the United States. It flourishes in the money-losing Canadian newspaper National Post. The paper rabidly supports Zionism, which means that it supports the dispossession of Palestinians who are indigenous to historical Palestine.

A recent editorial screed (it makes no effort to hide itself as such) was written by a Canadian version of American right-winger Ann Coulter (in regressivism but not glamor), Barbara Kay.

 

Kay describes Israel as a “literal phoenix risen from the ashes…” Ashes? What she didn’t mentioned was that, if there were any ashes, the ashes were of Palestinians who inhabited the territory.

Klingons in the Living Room
by Kurt Nimmo

It's a wonderful world. All this amazing technology and yet the average human -- or at least humans working for the government -- are no more morally advanced than the garden variety Neanderthal of the Middle Paleolithic.

Instead of stone tools, our Neanderthals are in the process of developing nanofabricated photonic material capable of negative refraction in the blue-green region of the visible spectrum. In other words, our Neanderthals in white lab coats are able to bend light in such a way as to make things invisible.

 

The history of the United States is filled with prominent families who achieved wealth, power and influence through legitimate and/or nefarious means.  But in the two hundred thirty year history of this nation, no two families have ascended to the apex of American politics like the Bushes and Kennedys of today.  And while both families have amassed enormous wealth and unparalleled notoriety, they couldn't be further apart ideologically or share more different views of America, being American, and the importance of public service.

 

For the Bush family, public service is principally an exercise in self-interest.  It's the effort to make the nation and the world suitable for Bush family values by using the highest positions of government to amass vast personal wealth.  Holding office is not public service for the Bushes.  Election to office inspires no allegiance to the electorate or commitment to honor its requests.

 

To the contrary.  Election to office is part of the Bush family's perverse sense of destiny, backed by a well "oiled" campaign machine.  What an extraordinary shock for the Bushes when Bush, Sr. lost his '92 bid for a second Presidential term to that 'hillbilly Governor from Arkansas'.  

Canada Refuses Entry to CODEPINK Cofounder Medea Benjamin and Retired Colonel Ann Wright      
by Medea Benjamin
Two well-respected US peace activists, CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin and retired US Army Colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, were denied entry into Canada today (Wednesday, October 3).

 

The two women were headed to Toronto to discuss peace and security issues at the invitation of the Toronto Stop the War Coalition. At the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Bridge they were detained, questioned and denied entry. They will hold a press conference on Thursday afternoon in front of the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC to ask the Canadian government to reverse its policy of barring peaceful protesters.

Intellectual Cleansing: Part I - Keeping Media Safe for Big Business  

by Media Lens

Martin Tierney is one of a tiny number of mainstream journalists willing to review our book, 'Guardians of Power'. In June 2006, he published an accurate outline of our argument in the Herald, commenting: "It stands up to scrutiny."

He added that we "do not see conscious conspiracy but a 'filter system maintained by free market forces.'" "After all it wouldn't be appropriate to show the limbs of third world children during Thanksgiving as it would only remind consumers who was really being stuffed."

Exactly so. But if no conspiracy is involved, how on earth does the market manage to filter dissident views with such consistency?

 

Kosovo: The US and the EU support a Political Process linked to Organized Crime

by Michel Chossudovsky

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is part of a criminal syndicate.

 

Death from Above
by Mickey Z.

 

I find it virtually impossible to avoid analysis of the omnipresent "support the troops" concept. The latest opportunity presented itself as I walked through a parking lot in suburban Texas.

Kick That Barrel
by Mike Ferner
In a town awash in irony, this particular example of it couldn't have been more striking.

Yesterday, in Washington, D.C., former Marine Corps Sergeant and Iraq War vet, Adam Kokesh, kick-rolled a 55-gallon oil drum lettered "Hands Off Iraqi Oil" across K Street, an avenue that has become synonymous with the power of corporate lobbyists.

Kokesh, former Army National Guard Sergeant Geoff Millard, and former Army Private Marc Train, in the center of a knot of demonstrators, took turns kicking the barrel up 16th Street towards Lafayette Park, adjoining the White House, for a protest sponsored by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and Oil Change International.

Calling for Solidarity - Lee Myung-bak government repression against the KCTU and Fundamental Trade Union Rights
by KCTU
In the midst of mass candlelight protests calling for renegotiations of the April 18th Protocol on importation of US beef, KCTU decided to go into general strike on July 2 calling for protection of people's right to health and renegotiation of April 18 Protocol to reflect food safety concerns.

 

 

The Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU) played a leading role in the general strike. The prosecutor and the Ministry of Labor declared the July 2nd strike clearly illegal, and even before the launch of strike, on June 30th, the 66 senior prosecutors called an urgent meeting at which it called the general strike a ¡®political strike¡¯ and announced they would pursue investigations against law-breakers.  

Kucinich Addresses the Party

by Dennis Kucinich

Freedom for Alan Johnston:

Freedom for Us All
by Ramzy Baroud

In Trafalgar Square in London, dozens of journalists representing every major news organization descended on a designated corner in the tourist infested area in support of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent kidnapped in Gaza on March 12, 2006, one month after his ordeal began.  

Awaiting the arrival of Alan’s family to a press conference, organized by Reporters without Borders, I stood along with a few activists. My nervous smiles, interrupted by brief statements to inquiring journalists, could hardly hide my utter feelings of shame. It’s not often that I feel this way, taking part in a solidarity event in support of anyone. This time was different, however, despite all attempts to distance oneself from responsibility. “Alan, they are not from amongst us,” read of the banners held by hundreds of journalists gathering in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to support Alan on the same day we gathered in London.