| Iraq | Israel/Palestine | Latin America | ||
| General US Foreign Policy | Civil Liberties, etc. | 2004 Elections |
Bush, the rainforest and a gas pipeline to enrich his friends from The Independent, 7/30/03
President George Bush is seeking funds for a controversial project to drive gas pipelines from pristine rainforests in the Peruvian Amazon to the coast. The plan will enrich some of Mr Bush's closest corporate campaign contributors while risking the destruction of rainforest, threatening its indigenous peoples and endangering rare species on the coast.
Burmese sue US oil company from The Guardian, 7/28/03
Multinationals on alert as judges are asked to rule that a Californian firm benefited from the junta's 'rape, murder and forced labour'
The spies who pushed for war from the Guardian
Details the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA..
Poll shows many Germans see U.S. behind Sept 11: BERLIN, July 23 (Reuters) - Almost one in three Germans below the age of 30 believes the U.S. government may have sponsored the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published on Wednesday. And about 20 percent of Germans in all age groups hold this view, a survey of 1,000 people conducted for the weekly Die Zeit said. It also said 68 percent of all Germans felt the media had not reported the full truth behind the attacks, in which some 3,000 people were killed when hijacked planes were crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Bush rebuke suggests patience running out for Syria, Iran from The Age
George Bush has accused Syria and Iran of undermining the Middle East peace process by harbouring terrorists.
Bush ready to wreck ozone layer treaty from The Independent, 7/20/03
New US demands - tabled at a little-noticed meeting in Montreal earlier this month - threaten to unravel one of the greatest environmental success stories of the past few decades, causing millions of deaths from cancer.
Trading on fear from The Guardian
From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen in the US as a marketing project. Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all seized the moment to capitalise on the war. PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain how it worked.
Never Mind the Torture from Mother Jones, 7/18/03
Islam Karimov, dictator of Uzbekistan, may boil opponents to death and imprison entire families to punish one member, but to the right wing he's a hero.
Puerto Ricans Angry That U.S. Overrode Death Penalty Ban 7/17/03
This island, it is safe to say, hates capital punishment. It has not had an execution since 1927. It outlawed the practice two years later and wrote this antipathy into its Constitution in 1952: "The death penalty shall not exist." That is why a federal trial here, in which the Justice Department is seeking the execution of two men accused of kidnapping and murder, has left many Puerto Ricans baffled and angry.
US warned of 'imminent' nuclear peril from The Age, 7/16/03
Former United States Defence Secretary William Perry has warned that the US and North Korea are drifting towards war, with an "imminent danger" of nuclear explosions in American cities.... Mr Perry said the US policy on North Korea was in disarray, with President George Bush to blame for an absence of negotiations.
U.S. Move to Resume Training Indonesian Military Draws Concern 7/15/03
Reports that the Bush administration will release funds to train Indonesian military officers--despite a recent vote by a key Senate committee that calls for training to be suspended until the army's responsibility for the killing of two U.S. teachers is clarified--have drawn strong expressions of concern by human rights groups here.
A Bottomless Void (James Carroll, The Boston Globe)
In the gothic splendor of the National Cathedral, that liturgy of trauma, George W. Bush made the most stirring -- and ominous -- declaration of his presidency. It was September 14, 2001. "Just three days removed from these events," he said, "Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil."
Activists Fear Bush Will Break AIDS Pledge 7/11/03
Even as President Bush toured Africa on Thursday touting his pledge to spend billions fighting HIV and AIDS on that continent, the Republican-controlled Congress moved toward allocating far fewer dollars on the initiative this year than many advocates believe Bush promised.
Intelligence is useless when it's distorted through a prism of state ideology: (Vancouver Sun) Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted Wednesday to the Senate armed services committee that the U.S. administration had twisted intelligence information to fit the Bush administration's scenario for invading Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, the United States' defence secretary, spoke more truth than he perhaps intended on Wednesday. He confessed to a U.S. Senate committee that the administration of George W. Bush had no fresh evidence of a super weapons program in Iraq before ordering the invasion. "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld said. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light -- through the prism of our experience on 9/11."
The Lost Decade: They Were Promised a Brighter Future, But in the 1990s the World's Poor Fell Further Behind from The Guardian, 7/9/03
The widening gulf between the global haves and have-nots was starkly revealed last night when the UN announced that while the US was booming in the 1990s more than 50 countries suffered falling living standards.
India Asks U.S. To Extradite Former Union Carbide Chairman 7/8/03
The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) and survivors organizations have prompted the Indian government to serve a longstanding notice to the U.S. government to extradite former Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson.
Colombia: U.S. "Misses an Opportunity": [Human Rights] Certification Not Based on Facts from Human Rights Watch, 7/8/03
The U.S. State Department's human rights certification for Colombia does not hold that country accountable for its failure to break persistent links between the military and abusive paramilitary groups, Human Rights Watch said today.
Programs to Help Poor Nations Criticized 7/8/03
UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch-Brown said a "guerrilla assault" is needed on the so-called "Washington Consensus" that sets out the general policies used by the IMF and the World Bank -- including an emphasis on careful control of public spending, tax reform, trade liberalization and privatization.
African leaders to challenge Bush over 'ruinous' trade practices from The Guardian, 7/8/03
African leaders are expected to give George Bush's tour a rocky start today by blaming US trade practices for impoverishing millions of farmers across the continent.
Britain, EU Set to Protest U.S. Military Tribunals at Guantanamo 7/7/03
Just as the administration of President George W. Bush has begun mending fences damaged by the U.S. war in Iraq in hopes that other countries will contribute peacekeepers to Washington's troubled occupation, its announcement Friday designating six of its foreign captives in the U.S. "war on terrorism" as eligible to be tried before military tribunals appears likely to annoy some of its strongest allies, especially Britain.
Bush pushes for next generation of nukes from USA Today(!), 7/7/03
[T]he first President Bush placed a moratorium on U.S. nuclear tests in October 1992.... In the 11 years since, the United States has worked to halt the spread of nuclear weapons around the world and has often touted its own self-imposed restraint as a model for other nations. But the Bush administration has now taken a decidedly different approach....
Iraq split triggers appeals to expand Security Council: NEW YORK — After the split in the United Nations over the U.S.-led war on Iraq, proposals for reforming the world body are emerging in an effort to salvage its relevance. Most center on expanding the 15-member Security Council to better reflect world opinion. Britain, for example, would like to see the council expanded to 24 members, including five more permanent members, including India, Japan and Germany. Canada, Australia and Russia, among others, have called for U.N. reforms. Critics say global political and economic realities have changed since the United Nations was founded in 1945 and that a voice must be given to increasingly vital but underrepresented countries.
Pat Robertson's Liberia Deal: (a column from the Washington Post) Televangelist Pat Robertson is at it again. Fresh from a shellacking over his pal Jerry Falwell's suggestion that certain groups of Americans brought on the September terrorist attacks -- "I totally concur," said Robertson at the time -- the Christian Coalition founder has weighed in once more with his revelations about God's plans for America. "The Lord is getting ready to shake this nation. We have not yet seen his judgment on America," Robertson told a crowd at the 40th anniversary of his Christian Broadcast Network on Oct 1. As a teaser to what God has in store for the nation unless it undergoes a spiritual revival, Robertson said, "This thing that happened in New York was child's play compared to what's going to happen." Robertson undoubtedly has it on good authority. But if the Almighty is going to get us for what we've done -- or failed to do -- as a nation, what in the world might God have in store for Pat Robertson and his friend and business partner, Liberian President Charles Taylor, the plague of West Africa. [POSTER'S NOTE: You can read Robertson's response to The Post article at Robertson's site.]
Macho U.S. runs into Arab male pride
A good case can be made, though, that in Iraq the Americans are now facing a much more dangerous enemy than Saddam. That enemy is Arab male pride. Firing at, and every now and then, actually hitting, an American soldier represents a chance for ordinary Iraqi men to regain some sense of their manhood.
Amnesty Labels U.S. Trials 'Travesty of Justice' 7/5/03
"We deeply regret that the President has taken his country one step closer to running trials that will flout basic standards of justice," the human rights group said in a statement late on Friday.
Lawyers Furious as US Builds Death Chambers 7/5/03
LAWYERS expressed outrage yesterday at plans to put al-Qaeda suspects, including two Britons and an Australian, on military trial in Guantanamo Bay. They would effectively be tried by a “kangaroo court”, stripped of all basic rights of due process that would be afforded in criminal courts in Britain or America, they said.
Intelligence Is The Achilles Heel of the Bush Doctrine: (Arms Control Association) There is not yet a clearly articulated “Bush doctrine” of national security. Yet the pointers so far, especially the victory in Iraq, suggest the shape of one that is stunning in its ambition. Focused on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the emerging Bush doctrine is anticipatory, pre-emptive, and, if need be, unilateral. Yet the emerging doctrine is bedeviled at its core by legitimacy and capacity, including, critically, the capability of U.S. intelligence. Although the United States has the military power to take out whatever miscreant state it chooses, it still lacks the ability to precisely locate and pre-emptively target WMD, despite all the technical wizardry of its intelligence. Indeed, even determining whether a potential adversary, such as Iraq, is developing and deploying nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons will continue to prove difficult. Taking out a foe’s real or suspected WMD is likely to continue to require taking out the foe.
U.S. Punishes 35 Countries for Signing Onto Int'l Court 7/2/03
Raising its war against the International Criminal Court to a new level, the administration of President George W. Bush Tuesday cut off military aid to 35 friendly countries in retaliation for their support of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and refusal to exempt U.S. soldiers from the ICC's jurisdiction.
Washington Lends Muscle to Besieged Colombian Pipeline 7/1/03
"By dedicating U.S. funds to the specific purpose of protecting a private oil pipeline, the United States is further drawn into civil conflict in Colombia, a conflict that is essentially about major resources like oil. As infrastructure lies at the heart of the conflict, the U.S. policy is likely to aggravate the situation," said Kimberly Stanton, [Washington Office on Latin America]'s deputy director, in an interview yesterday.
Bush 'indicted' over war crimes: (Japanese Times) A group of Japanese lawyers unveiled documents Monday "indicting" U.S. President George W. Bush for war crimes allegedly committed against the Afghan people since the United States-led coalition began its antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001. "This is an act that breaks international rules, such as the idea of (honoring) human rights, that have been formed over so many years," said Koken Tsuchiya, former president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and head of the 11-member prosecutors' team in the tribunal. "We decided this case has sufficient reason to be brought to court."
Nothing but lip service: (Army Times Editorial) In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.
[POSTER'S NOTE: Unfortunately, Army Times is only available on a subscription based service, even on-line, so I apologize for posting this whole story. It's just interesting to see what the army is saying about Bush.]
For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary — including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.
Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones. Translation: Money talks — and we all know what walks.
Doing the math... Bush thinks not seeing your kids for a year and getting your ass shot at halfway around the world isn't worth an extra $7.50 a day.
Let that sink in. The AWOL Lieutenant can dress up in a flight suit to Support Our Troops, but the guys wearing 35-pound packs in 100- degree heat aren't worth an extra seven and a half dollars a day. And while billion-dollar contracts go to administration cronies, their deaths -- their deaths -- aren't worth an extra six grand for the families they leave behind.
Update: a couple of active and former servicemen have emailed to say that the total gear schlepped around by each man are even heavier than described above -- 60, 80, even 100 pounds by the time you throw in extra ammo, water, etc. To which I can only respond: holy crap. And the forecast for Baghdad includes highs of 115 degrees and blazing sun all next week. I simply cannot imagine.
Migrants Rights Treaty Takes Effect 7/1/03
A new international treaty to protect the rights of migrant workers around the world takes effect Tuesday, although most nations that import migrant labor, including the United States, have not ratified it and thus will not be bound by its provisions.
US-based missiles to have global reach from The Guardian, 7/1/03
The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons, including huge hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space, that will allow the US to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own territory.
