Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
The Finkelstein Principle
by Abukar Arman Like all other actions, speaking the truth has its reaction and indeed price. A few months ago, I was honored to join two Middle East experts — Professor John Mueller and Professor John Quigley — in a panel discussion on Jimmy Carter’s “controversial” book, 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.'
As I, a small-time writer, was frantically searching for material to make me sound halfway intelligent, I came across numerous articles, essays, and reviews that offered little or no refutation of the content of the book and instead focused on the author’s alleged “anti-Semitic” motive.
Leading that ad hominem campaign was none other than Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard. No surprise there, as the long time civil-libertarian has lately turned into a blatant advocate of legalizing torture, executing collective punishment, and sustaining the brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people.
Scheherazade in the White House
by Christian Salmon
A few days before the 2004 presidential election, Ron Suskind, a columnist who had been investigating the White House and its communications for years, wrote in The New York Times about a conversation he had with a presidential adviser in 2002.
“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community’, which he defined as people ‘who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ ”
Miracle Rockies Downplay Christian Label
by David Zirin Twenty-one wins in twenty-two games. An improbable run to the World Series. One of the hottest streaks to end a season in the history of baseball. And not two pitchers the average fan could even name. Ladies and gents, your Colorado Rockies: a team performing what even an atheist could call a baseball miracle.
And "miracle" is an appropriate term for a team that riled the baseball world last year by claiming that filling the dugout with Christian players would grease the skids to greatness.
The Gap: New Frontiers in Child Abuse
by Barbara Ehrenreich It was enough to make you vomit all over your new denim jacket. The Gap has been caught using child labor in an Indian sweatshop, and not just child labor -- child slaves.
As extensively reported on the news, the children, some as young
as ten, were worked sixteen-hour days, fed bowls of mosquito-covered
rice, and forced to sleep on a roof and use over-flowing latrines.
Those who slowed down were beaten with rubber pipes and the ones who
cried had oily cloths stuffed in their mouths.
But let's try
to look at this dispassionately -- not as a human rights issue but as a
PR disaster, ranking right up there with the 1982 discovery of cyanide
in Tylenol capsules. Think of this as a case study in a corporate
Crisis Communication course: How is The Gap handling the problem, and
could it do better?
Kenya's Rigged Election
by Tavia Nyong'o
The admittedly dire situation unfolding in Kenya today -- where violence has flared up in Nairobi, Eldoret, Kisumu, Mombasa and elsewhere -- is not another Rwanda. The underlying crisis is more like that of Ukraine, where, four years ago, an election commission also rigged the results in favor of one candidate and a commanding majority of the people rose up in protest, forcing a cancellation of the fraudulent election and, ultimately, a revote that installed Viktor Yushchenko as president.
Raila Odinga has yet to get his revote. But he has vowed not to negotiate with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki until the latter admits the election was stolen and resigns. (In an unusual coincidence, the banner color of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement is the same as Yushchenko's.)
Who goes Nazi?
by Dorothy Thompson (August 1941) It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know.
I have gone through the experience many times–in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.
Studs's People
by Harry Maurer One day in 1974, I got a call from my agent.
"I've got an idea," she said. "What if you did a book of interviews on unemployment, like Studs Terkel's Working, only with people out of a job?"
So I bought a tape recorder, tried my hand at "oral history" and found I loved the interview crucible, the savor of creating in collaboration as a long conversation clicks.
I traveled around the country, and after some vicissitudes, Not Working was published in 1979. I stole not only Studs's technique and format but also his title. Whereupon he called me up and asked me to appear on his radio show.
Over the past year, I’ve posted the first nine installments (eight chapters and an excursis) of my unpublished book, THE RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL. It’s a book of which I feel very fond, and one that continues to excite me (and one whose failure to find a publisher I grieve). I’m glad that it has been grabbed at least some of you as well.
Here now, for your possible weekend reading, is chapter 9.
The overarching question with which THE RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL is concerned might be stated: Is there something that we can trust to see that what unfolds in our lives and in the world is as it should be, or are we wise to try to impose our will and intention to make things happen as they should happen?
The book itself works by weaving together two levels: the telling of a story and the exploration of ideas. How the story unfolds is in itself organically connected with how the ideas get clarified.
At this point, for a couple of reasons I was beginning to feel stressed out again.
For one thing, my recent forrays in search of good companionship had been disappointing. Rather than support for my idea of a dance of integration between flow and control, I’d found among the people I’d engaged a polarization of beliefs that left me feeling alone in the “excluded middle.” My efforts to get both sides of the picture included had been rebuffed first by one side and then the other. Which left me feeling not only lonelier than before I’d begun my search, but also a bit weary and bruised from the non-cooperative feeling of the interchange.
In addition, an old source of stress had returned. Once again, I felt uncertain about my adequacy to meet the challenge I’d taken on in this project. It was still unclear whether I’d ever get a good conceptual handle on this matter of unfolding, or this dance of flow and control. The question kept recurring, about its numerous different dimensions, all running so deep and broad, were they even all aspects of the same cosmic issue, or was I lumping things together that didn’t really adhere? At the intellectual level, I still did not feel in secure command of my terrain.
At the same time, it seemed that my pushing the process of critical analysis had cost me some connection with my initial spiritual impetus. When my view of value had been simple and unitary, I’d been aglow with wonderment. Subjecting my beliefs to rational scrutiny had complicated both my understanding and my emotional stance, and made me less confident that whatever I might end up writing would provide –for the reader and for myself– the deep connection I sought at the level of meaning and soul.
Had I pushed too far with the intellect, or not far enough?
Over the coming weeks much discussion will be had on the new Socialist party announced by President Chavez. Arthur Shaw’s article contains useful analysis and interesting opinions in “It is premature at the organizational stage to talk about ideological unity”, on Axis of Logic (Dec. 21st) , and deals with the political changes due to take place in Venezuela. It concerns the creation of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and the ideological obstacles facing some of the main parties – the PPT (Homeland for All), Social Democrats, PODEMOS and the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV). It covers among many important points the political will necessary for the parties to dissolve themselves and merge into the PSUV.
The end of America: The police state is right here, right now
by Carolyn Baker In April 2007, I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps," posted in several places online.
I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth.
I had been looking for a list -- or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but her just-published book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture -- a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade.
Ecological Seeing: Walking in a Sacred Manner
by Charles Sullivan Late this morning I heard two northern orioles singing along the edge of the back field where I live. The great-crested flycatcher flits amid the green canopy in search of insects and calls out from an unseen perch many feet above the ground.
I did not see the bird but I know its call. The wood thrush and the scarlet tanager are singing in the forest, and the soil is cooled by shade for the first time this year. As a result, shade loving plants are in flower, and a host of associated events are set in motion. And so one season passes into another as the year continually unfurls, like the leaves of a young fern.
Over Hill, Over Dale: The Militarization of Culture
by Charles Sullivan
A very disturbing commercial is being shown on network television in the United States with alarming regularity. I have seen it frequently during the past few weeks on an NBC station that broadcasts from the nation’s capital, Washington, DC.
It opens with a male chorus—perhaps a military choir--singing: “Over hill, over dale; we have hit the dusty trail.” The song has the cadence of a forced march. In muted light soldiers are seen wading through fetid water with weapons aloft, while well coordinated precision military operations are unfolding all around, like a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. We are supposed to be impressed with the military and technological prowess on display, awed into admiration for it; awed into submission to it, the oracle of our times.
United in strength and solidarity, the Haida, Gitxsan, Wet’suwet’en, Tlingit, Haisla Nations, and non-aboriginal supporters gathered with the Tahltan on August 4, 2006 in the
Kla-bon-a-tine Sacred Headwaters/Mount Klappan area to celebrate their
connection to this land.
But Did He Inhale?
by C. L. Cook Canadian news reported today on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's unexplained public sojourn into criminality, a side trip taken yesterday before leaving the nation's capital after signing a "carbon pact" with Stephen Harper.
According to the CanWest News Service,
Schwarzenegger unexpectedly ordered his limo driver to stop at Ottawa's
Westin Hotel, and sent an aide into the International News Plus
shop off the lobby, apparently to purchase the 'Governator' a cigar.
John Graham, the Canadian First Nations AIM activist, has
lost his appeal against an extradition order from the United States to
have him returned to the U.S. to face the same courts that sent up
Leonard Peltier nearly thirty years ago.
It's a bitter reminder of
Peltier's extradition from Canada, before his shoddy trial and
life-sentence, extracted from Canadian authorities based on "evidence"
invented by the F.B.I. The details of Graham's history and struggle
with the government is from the advocacy site, Free John Graham.
Who's Killing Our Pollinators?
by C. L. Cook More dire perhaps than the prospective loss of the Polar Bear, Great Whales, or Siberian Tiger, is the near eradication of North America's humble bumble bee, and other pollinator insects and birds; the erasure of the involuntary contributors to our agricultural efforts could mean extinction for US!
An ominous warning was issued to the U. S. House of Representatives' Committee on Agriculture from apiarists and entomologists, farmers and government scientists; the mysterious mass death of bees across North America is spreading, so far spelling an end to an estimated 80% of the populations studied.
Shoah: A Promise of Holocaust Delivered in Gaza
by C. L. Cook Friday, Israel's deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai promised Gaza would experience a "Shoah," and today the Israeli Defense Forces made good the minister's promise, raining tank shells, rockets, bullets, and bombs into the walled enclave, home to as many as 1.5 million Palestinians.
Clashes between Palestinians and IDF infantry are reported in the north of Gaza, while the Israeli Air Force fired rockets and missiles into Gaza City.
"Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust, adapted from its biblical definition, "calamity." Literally, as Wikipedia defines it, the term is derived from the Greek word holokauston, meaning completely burnt, as a sacrificial offering to God. But which god would demand the broken and charred bodies that lay dead beneath the rubble of Gaza today?
by C. L. Cook Reuters is reporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is heading towards victory in the government reform referendum he initiated.
Despite millions of dollars allegedly spent by Washington to upper crust college "protesters," and a virulent campaign waged against the populist in the U.S. and Canadian press, in the final analysis it appears it is Venezuelans who will determine the future course of their nation.
UPDATE: Check that! At this hour, (06:00 gmt) the BBC is reporting Hugo Chavez admitting defeat in a narrowly contested referendum fight that saw the No vote delivering Chavez his first electoral defeat since coming to power.
Michael Moore announced to Jay Leno's Tonight Show audience Thursday he has been served with a subpoena concerning the trip he and several New York City 9/11 responders took to Cuba during the filming of his latest documentary release, 'Sicko.'
In the film, Moore dissects the American "health care" system, making a strong argument for a single-payer, government run system similar to Canada's to cover the needs of millions of Americans who cannot afford to see a doctor.
A particularly poignant segment sees Moore comparing the medical
attention made available to prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, those
ostensibly deemed responsible for the 9/11 attacks, to the experience
of ailing New Yorkers who responded to the disaster of that date,
working at "ground zero," and subsequently sickened due to atmospheric
pollutants released from the pulverized twin towers.
2nd day of summit to bring more protests
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 | 8:46 AM ET CBC News After a day of protests that Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed as "sad," many protesters planned to continue their demonstrations in the Quebec resort town of Montebello on the second and final day of the summit meeting of the three North American leaders on Tuesday.
Harper will meet with U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon for formal trilateral talks Tuesday after one-on-one sessions the previous day.
Outside the heavily guarded resort on the banks of the Ottawa River, where the trio was meeting to discuss the Security and Prosperity Partnership, riot squad officers clashed with hundreds of protesters.
by Council of Canadians The Council of Canadians has been told it will not be allowed to rent a municipal community centre for a public forum it had planned to coincide with the next Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello, Quebec on August 20 and 21.
The Municipality of Papineauville, which is about six kilometres from Montebello, has informed the Council of Canadians that the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and the U.S. Army will not allow the municipality to rent the Centre Communautaire de Papineauville for a public forum on Sunday August 19, on the eve of the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership Leaders Summit.
"It is deplorable that we are being prevented from bringing together a panel of writers, academics and parliamentarians to share their concerns about the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Canadians," said Brent Patterson, director of organizing with the Council of Canadians. "Meanwhile, six kilometres away, corporate leaders from the United States, Mexico and Canada will have unimpeded access to our political leaders."
Number Two: Stephen Harper's Second Speech from the Throne
by C. L. Cook That great whooshing sound you hear is Canada as we know it being flushed finally down the crapper.
Prior to the minority government's Tuesday statement of principles, Harper, in stentorian style, promised this Speech from the Throne would be a de facto vote of confidence. He is, in effect, drawing the line in the sand for the Loyal Opposition Liberals to either put up or shut up.
Or, as his friend and political inspiration, George W. Bush might say, and as the prime minister himself actually did say last week, "Time to fish, or cut bait."
The Independent has a remarkable story on Sami al-Haj, the Sudanese journalist who has been held in George W. Bush's concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for five years.
Haj has not been charged with any crime, but he is undoubtedly guilty of a grave sin in the eyes of the Bush Regime: he is a cameraman for Al Jazeera.
From the Guardian: The Sandinista leader and former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega appeared to have mounted a spectacular political comeback last night after preliminary results showed he had won Nicaragua's presidential election in the first round. Mr Ortega led by a margin which seemed wide enough to avoid a run-off and to deliver a stinging rebuke to Washington, which had openly campaigned against him...Roberto Rivas, the head of Nicaragua's top electoral body, said the vote was clean and transparent. An army of 17,000 observers, including the former US president Jimmy Carter and EU officials, was expected largely to endorse that view.
Ortega ran and won with the backing of several prominent ex-Contras, including Jamie Morales, his own running mate. Morales had been the Contras' spokesman in Washington during the Reagan years when, with the direct involvement of VP George Bush, the Administration joined hands with the mullahs of Iran and the druglords of Central and South America to fund, arm and train a terrorist army to overthrow the Sandinista government. Although this exercise in mass state terrorism failed on the battlefield, the Reagan-Bush policy of economic terror managed to reduce Nicaragua to dire poverty, with the open threat that the stranglehold would go on until the Sandinistas were gone.
I.
Why is the United
States government spending millions of dollars to track down critics of
George W. Bush in the press? And why have major American universities
agreed to put this technology of tyranny into the state's hands?
At the most basic level, of course,
both questions are easily answered: 1) Power. 2) Money. The Bush
administration wants to be able to root out - and counteract - any
dissenting noises that might put a crimp in its ongoing crusade for
"full spectrum dominance" of global affairs, while the august
institutions of higher learning involved - the universities of Cornell,
Pittsburgh and Utah - crave the federal green that keeps them in clover.
But beyond these grubby realities,
there are many other disturbing aspects of this new program - which is
itself only part of a much broader penetration of American academia by
the Department of Homeland Security.
As with so many of the Bush
measures that have quietly stripped away America's liberties, this one
too is beginning with a whimper, not a bang: a modest $2.4 Department
of Homeland Security million grant to develop "sentiment analysis"
software that will allow the government's "security organs" to sift
millions of articles for "negative opinions of the United States or its
leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas," as the New York
Times reported earlier this month. Such negative opinions must be
caught and catalogued because they could pose "potential threats to the
nation," security apparatchiks told the Times.
This hydra-headed snooping program
is based on "information extraction," which, as a chipper PR piece from
Cornell tells us, is a process by which "computers scan text to find
meaning in natural language," rather than the rigid literalism
ordinarily demanded by silicon cogitators. Under the gentle tutelage of
Homeland Security, the universities "will use machine-learning
algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and
opinion and teach them to tell the difference," says the Cornell blurb.
At this point, the ancient and
ever-pertinent question of Pontius Pilate comes to mind: "What is
truth?" Of course, Pilate, being a devotee of what George W. Bush likes
to call "the path of action," gave the answer to his philosophical
inquiry in brute physical form: truth is whatever the empire says it is
- so take this Galilean rabble-rouser out and crucify him already. In
like manner, it will certainly be the government "security organs" who
ultimately determine the criteria for what is fact and what is opinion
- and whether the latter is positive or negative, perhaps even a
candidate for the Bush-Pilate "path."
The academics will be trying out
the Sentiment Analysis program (let's call it SAP, for short) on four
main clusters of articles from 2001-2002, the Times reports. These
include: Bush's famous declaration of an "axis of evil" threatening the
world; the treatment of his Terror War captives in Guantanamo Bay;
global warming; and the failed Bush-backed bid to topple Venezuela's
Hugo Chavez in a coup - all of them issues on which the Bush
administration was at odds with much of the world, and large swathes of
American opinion as well. Obviously, such issues are fertile fields for
terrorist thought-crimes to be snagged and tagged by SAP.
For those with concerns about civil
liberties, Cornell assures us that SAP will be limited strictly to
foreign publications. Oh, really? Hands up out there, everyone who
believes that this technology will not be used to ferret out "potential
threats to the nation" arising in the Homeland press as well. After
all, the Unitary Executive Decider-in-Chief has already decided that
the nation's iron-clad laws against warrantless surveillance of
American citizens can be swept aside by his "inherent powers" if he
decides it's necessary. Why should he bother with any petty
restrictions on a press-monitoring program? And wouldn't dissension
within the ranks of the volk itself actually be more threatening to
government policy than the grumbling of malcontents overseas?
New Britney Spears Sex Tape Bares All!
by Chris Floyd I know no one cares about Somalia; every time I write about it on the website, the traffic drops like a stone. (Let's see if that headline draws a few eyeballs, though. If it works, we might just rename the whole damn blog.)
But I don't care if no one cares. There is a continuous slaughter and ravaging of innocent human beings going on in Somalia, a vast atrocity that is sponsored, funded, greenlighted and directly aided by the United States government, and I'm going to keep on writing about it.
Degrees of Significance: The Nomination of Barack Obama
by Chris Floyd The symbolic significance of Obama Barack's nomination victory is not insubstantial. In a land where, not so long ago, having the slightest drop of "Negro blood" in your genetic inheritance was enough to bar you -- legally and formally -- from many jobs, educational opportunities, places of residence, medical care, full participation in society, etc. (and where these obstacles still persist, in practice if not in law, for many people), it is striking to see a man whose father was not only black but also a "full-blooded African" (cue the psychosexual "Mandingo" anxieties of generations of trembly white folk) on the doorstep of the White House.
At the very least -- until the novelty wears off (and novelty wears off very, very quickly in America)-- if Obama wins the presidency, there will be some aesthetic relief in seeing a different kind of face on the tee-vee mouthing various pieties, refusing to take any options off the table, etc., in place of the long procession of pasty white males of Northern European descent.
As for the substantial significance of Obama's nomination win, there is none. The only thing that really matters is what the human being named Barack Obama will do with power (if he gets it), and not his skin color.
The Bomb in the Shadows: Proliferation, Corruption and the Way of the World
by Chris Floyd
This week, the Sunday Times lifted the lid on one of the most important stories of the last quarter-century: how American officials sold nuclear arms technology to illegal proliferators -- including ideological allies of al Qaeda -- in return for bribes and other inducements.
This widespread corruption has been protected from exposure by the highest levels of the U.S. government, which has gone to enormous lengths to protect the truth from coming out.
The entire planet has been put at grave risk by the greed -- and geopolitical gamesmanship -- that lies behind this criminal enterprise, which actually is even more extensive, and goes back further in time, than the newspaper's remarkable revelations.
29. Shock and Yawn (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Chris Floyd
Shellfire and Damnation:
The Never-Ending Shock and Awe Barrage of Baghdad
by Chris Floyd The dwindling band of armchair cheerleaders for the war in Iraq often like to point to the end of World War II as a comparison point for rebuilding conquered lands.
Of course, much of the time, the cheerleaders simply concoct fantasy scenarios and falsified histories in a pathetic attempt to steal the gravitas – and competence – of that momentous time for their own tawdy criminal adventure.
For example, Condi Rice and ashcanned Pentagon honcho Don Rumsfeld have risibly compared the full-blown, years-long Iraqi insurgency , which has killed more than 3,300 U.S. troops, to the "Werewolf" organization of post-war guerrillas that the Nazis sketchily planned in the waning days of the war – and which was never activated, because it didn't really exist. Not a single American soldier was killed by "insurgents" or "dead-enders" in occupied Germany and Japan in the years following the war.
Here's how it works in Jeb Bush's Florida: If you're a convicted felon who has served your time and paid your debt to society, you can't vote. (You also can't vote if you have a name that is remotely simil ar to a convicted felon's, or are the wrong color and thereby assumed to be a convicted felon, but that's another story.)
However, while being a convicted felon means you cannot take part in the democratic process in Florida (assuming, for the sake of argument only of course, that a democratic process actually exists in Florida), you can pack all the heat you want, even if you've served time for, er, blowing someone away. As the Sun-Sentinel reveals (via The Gun Guys ), "Florida has given concealed weapon licenses to hundreds of people who wouldn't have a chance of getting them in most other states because of their criminal histories. Courts have found them responsible for assaults, burglaries, sexual battery, drug possession, child molestation — even homicide."
Well, why not? After all, going armed is far more important than going to the polls. We certainly don't want any losers who lacked the political pull to stay out of prison — like, say, Jeb Bush's daughter Nicole — to be able to rejoin society and have their say at the ballot box. But we are very happy to supply them with weapons so they can utilize the handy tips they learned in stir. Who cares? It's a well-known fact that losers almost always prey on other losers, so it's not like too many real people get hurt.
The Sun-Sentinel has done yeoman service in digging up these revelations — a task made harder by the fact that Jeb's rubber-stamp Republican legislature last year "made the names of licensed gun carriers a secret." But hey — if you know up front who's got a rod and who doesn't, that takes the sport out of it, right? Especially with Florida's equally enlightened "Stand Your Ground" law, which essentially allows you to kill anybody whom you vaguely suspect might be a possible threat to you — sort of the pre-emptive "National Security Strategy of the United States" in miniature.
Shoot first, ask no questions later, and for God's sake, keep the riff-raff down: that's the Bush way — in Florida, in Washington, in the world!
Goodbye to All That: Silber's Last Word on the War Against Iran
by Chris Floyd Arthur Silber has said his last word on the impending war with Iran -- and a mighty blast it is too, summing up almost a year and a half of bell-clanging witness to America's inexorable sleepwalk toward another monstrous conflict. (A sleepwalk that's now breaking into a headlong gallop.)
Arthur rightly despairs of finding any way to stop this war crime now -- especially given the fact that the Democrats have "already approved the critical rationales for an attack."
32. Slavery Now! (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Chris Floyd
Deeper Into Darkness:
Slavery and Betrayal in Bush's Gulag
by Chris Floyd Rich Kastelein has unearthed more background on the literally atrocious case of recently released Gitmo captive Bisher al-Rawi, whose story was highlighted here yesterday. Meanwhile "Smintheus," a frequent commenter here and author of the blog "Inconvenient News" offers further clarification, and a damning examination of a much-overlooked aspect of Bush's gulag: it is a literal system of slavery, where human beings are bought and sold, traded and transported like meat: "America's Slaves."
While yesterday's post focused on the ludicrous charges used by Gambian authorities to detain al-Rawi and his friend, Jamil el-Banna -- that a battery charger in their luggage was a "suspicious device" -- the Independent story provided by Kastelein and Smintheus' work focuses on the real reason the two men were detained, at the specific request of British intelligence: to press-gang them into work as spies for the Anglo-American "war on terror."
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes
by Chris Floyd
As
usual, Scott Ritter talks good sense -- in this case about the coming
war with Iran, and the specious casus belli that the Bush-Cheney gang
seem to have finally settled on: Iran's alleged "sanctuaries" for
training and arming Iraqi insurgents. Ritter demolishes this argument,
just as he crushed the lies in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. His
truth-telling was of no avail then -- and it will likely be of no avail
now. But go read the whole thing anyway.
Meanwhile, Juan Cole
carries out some demolition work of his own, taking apart the ignorant
mischief of Edward Luttwak, who was given a NYT pulpit to proclaim that
Obama is an apostate Muslim -- and thus in danger of imminent death
from one billion of his erstwhile co-religionists. (As if Luttwak and
the Right are really, really concerned about Obama's survival.)
I was going to write about the recent "revelations" that leaders in Colombia's American-backed ruling party were hip-deep in blood and corruption with the right-wing militias that have murdered a nd terrorized thousands of innocent people. But I see that Jonathan Schwarz already has it well covered, with a sharp personal angle thrown in as well.
Schwarz is always worth reading -- as we've often said here, if you're not checking him out every day, then you've got rocks in the head, dad -- but he has been a man on fire recently. Hie yourself over there now, after a taste of these excerpts.
Before the 9/11 attacks came along, I used to work with groups trying to get the U.S. to stop funding Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries. The pretense, of course, was we were funding the Colombian military in their heroic struggle in the War on Drugs. The reality, that the paramilitaries were run by the Colombian government to murder anyone to the left of Elliot Abrams, is finally being acknowledged....
It's difficult to overstate the level of human depravity exhibited by the paramilitaries. One of their favorite techniques is to kill people with chainsaws:
"The Chainsaw Massacre is not a film in Colombia," said government ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, referring to the April 12 [2001] paramilitary massacre in Alto Naya, 650 kilometers (404 miles) southeast of [Bogota]...
It left some 128 people dead, including 40 in Alto Naya, according to official reports quoted by Cifuentes in an interview with AFP...
Around 400 paramilitaries took part in this "caravan of death" against civilians accused of supporting leftist guerrillas, Cifuentes said in his Bogota office.
"The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut open with a chainsaw. A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut and both hands also amputated," said the ombudsman...
"A neighbor pounced upon a paramilitary that was ready to shoot him and took his weapon, but unfortunately he didn't know how to fire a rifle. They dragged him away, cut him open with a chainsaw and chopped him up," a witness of the massacre told El Espectador daily.
I once attended a lunch with a Colombian union official. He said the paramilitaries would generally warn people like him of their intentions, by visiting them and cutting their sleeves or pants where they would later cut off their arms and legs if they didn't flee the area. Less important people didn't get warnings.
This year we're giving Colombia approximately 600 million dollars for these appealing activities. The biggest upswing in aid came during the last years of the Clinton administration. What's really neat is the paramilitaries are actually the ones controlling most of the cocaine trade in Colombia. In other words, as part of the War on Drugs, we're giving massive aid to some of the world's biggest drug dealers.
If past experience is any guide, the people mentioned in the above article as investigating this (e.g., Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro) have maybe four weeks to live.
SPECIAL BONUS DEPRAVITY: I once worked for a right-wing corporate lawyer who had (1) a massive cocaine addiction and (2) a Colombian maid who'd been a kindergarten teacher until she fled. I often felt he should have made the connection explicit by telling her, "Look at me! I can destroy your country and your life using only MY NOSE!!!"
Of course, in the long human tradition of utter indifference to those less powerful than you, he knew neither that she'd been a kindergarten teacher nor even that she was Colombian.
Bookstore 
Like all other actions, speaking the truth has its reaction and indeed price. A few months ago, I was honored to join two Middle East experts — Professor John Mueller and Professor John Quigley — in a panel discussion on Jimmy Carter’s “controversial” book, 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.' 
Twenty-one wins in twenty-two games. An improbable run to the World Series. One of the hottest streaks to end a season in the history of baseball. And not two pitchers the average fan could even name. Ladies and gents, your Colorado Rockies: a team performing what even an atheist could call a baseball miracle. 
It was enough to make you vomit all over your new denim jacket. The Gap has been caught using child labor in an Indian sweatshop, and not just child labor -- child slaves.
One day in 1974, I got a call from my agent.
In April 2007, I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps," posted in several places online. 
A very disturbing commercial is being shown on network television in the United States with alarming regularity. I have seen it frequently during the past few weeks on an NBC station that broadcasts from the nation’s capital, Washington, DC.
Canadian news reported today on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's unexplained public sojourn into criminality, a side trip taken yesterday before leaving the nation's capital after signing a "
John Graham, the Canadian First Nations AIM activist, has
lost his appeal against an extradition order from the United States to
have him returned to the U.S. to face the same courts that sent up
Leonard Peltier nearly thirty years ago. 
More dire perhaps than the prospective loss of the Polar Bear, Great Whales, or Siberian Tiger, is the near eradication of North America's humble bumble bee, and other pollinator insects and birds; the erasure of the involuntary contributors to our agricultural efforts could mean extinction for US!
Reuters is reporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is heading towards victory in the government reform referendum he initiated. 
Michael Moore announced to Jay Leno's Tonight Show audience Thursday he has been served with a subpoena concerning the trip he and several New York City 9/11 responders took to Cuba during the filming of his latest documentary release, 'Sicko.' 
After a day of protests that Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed as "sad," many protesters planned to continue their demonstrations in the Quebec resort town of Montebello on the second and final day of the summit meeting of the three North American leaders on Tuesday.
The Council of Canadians has been told it will not be allowed to rent a municipal community centre for a public forum it had planned to coincide with the next 
That great whooshing sound you hear is Canada as we know it being flushed finally down the crapper. 
The Independent has a remarkable story on Sami al-Haj, the Sudanese journalist who has been held in George W. Bush's concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for five years. 
sults showed he had won Nicaragua's presidential election in the first round. Mr Ortega led by a margin which seemed wide enough to avoid a run-off and to deliver a stinging rebuke to Washington, which had openly campaigned against him...Roberto Rivas, the head of Nicaragua's top electoral body, said the vote was clean and transparent. An army of 17,000 observers, including the former US president Jimmy Carter and EU officials, was expected largely to endorse that view. 
into the state's hands?
The symbolic significance of Obama Barack's nomination victory is not insubstantial. In a land where, not so long ago, having the slightest drop of "Negro blood" in your genetic inheritance was enough to bar you -- legally and formally -- from many jobs, educational opportunities, places of residence, medical care, full participation in society, etc. (and where these obstacles still persist, in practice if not in law, for many people), it is striking to see a man whose father was not only black but also a "full-blooded African" (cue the psychosexual "Mandingo" anxieties of generations of trembly white folk) on the doorstep of the White House. 
The dwindling band of armchair cheerleaders for the war in Iraq often like to point to the end of World War II as a comparison point for rebuilding conquered lands. 
Arthur Silber has said his last word on the 
Rich Kastelein has unearthed
l covered, with a sharp personal angle thrown in as well.
