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Rootsie's Blog
Saturday, April 30th

Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility"

by Alexander Cockburn
Whatever sour emotions I entertained while reading accounts of the funeral of Marla Ruzicka had nothing really to do with the death on April 16 of a brave young woman in Baghdad. On many accounts and I have had a detailed conversation with a close friend of Marla's whose judgment I respect she was an idealistic person whose prime political flaw seems to have been the very forgivable one of naivety.

Both in Afghanistan and Iraq, in furtherance of her humanitarian schemes, Marla Ruzicka elected a stance of studious neutrality in ascribing responsibility for the victims of US bombings and ground fire. This pursuit of "credibility" certainly yielded its ironic reward in the political range of those who publicly mourned her.

A US senator Barbara Boxer attended Ruzicka's funeral in Lakeport, northern California. Bob Herbert of the New York Times poured out an emotional column honoring Ruzicka. So did Robert L. Pollock, a writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. " America has lost a peerless and unique ambassador," Pollock wrote on April 19. "[S]he stood out from the crowd of journalists and self-proclaimed humanitarians--far too many of whom believed their mission was to bear witness to an American misadventure in Iraq that would, and should, fail."

The sourness in my soul stemmed from a contrast. Almost exactly two years earlier, on March 16, 2003, another brave young woman in a foreign land lost her life, not to a suicide bomber, but under the blade of a 47-ton bulldozer made in America by the Caterpillar company specifically for house demolitions and driven by an Israeli soldier. Maybe, in the last seconds of his life, that suicide bomber in Baghdad never even saw Ruzicka. The soldier in Gaza surely saw Corrie, clearly visible in her fluorescent orange jacket, and rolled the bulldozer blade right over her.

No US senator attended Rachel's funeral after her parents brought her home to the state of Washington. Both US senators ran in the opposite direction. Later the Corries disclosed that after their return to the US with their daughter's body, they contacted their US Senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, and told them how their daughter had been deliberately murdered while peacefully demonstrating against house demolitions, which are violations of international law. Murray and Cantwell, the Corries recall, were quick with expressions of outrage and promises of investigations. The Corries never heard from Murray or Cantwell again.
Full: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.30.05 @ 04:50 PM CST [link]

Fox News vs. Hugo Chavez

by Nikolas Kozloff
Given recent friction between Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the White House it inevitably was only a matter of time before Rupert Murdoch's Fox News would start to ratchet up its shrill ideological pressure. Since taking office in 1998, Chávez has had a stormy relationship with his powerful northern neighbor. Chávez, who established close ties with Washington's anathema, Cuban President Fidel Castro, criticized U.S.-led efforts for a free trade zone in the Americas, which he insisted would primarily benefit the U.S., while opposing the war in Iraq, resulting in no mystery as to why he has long been so reviled by the Bush administration. Tensions have been bristling between the two nations particularly since April 2002 when Chávez, the democratically elected president, was briefly removed from power in a coup which involved U.S. funding.

A maverick politician and former paratrooper, Chávez accused (not without merit) Washington of sponsoring his attempted overthrow as well as supporting a devastating oil lockout in 2002-3. Not one to easily soften his language, Chávez bluntly referred to the United States as "an imperialist power." What is more, according to the Venezuelan leader, Bush had plans to have him assassinated. In a further rhetorical sortie, Chávez warned that if he were killed the United States would have to "forget Venezuelan oil."

In a series of recent television reports Fox News has derided the firebrand leftist leader, presenting the current Venezuelan political habitat entirely from the perspective of the country's conservative middle-class opposition as well as the Bush administration.

In siding with the opposition, Fox News joins the ranks of almost all of the Venezuelan television stations including Radio Caracas TV and Venevision (see Nikolas Kozloff's Thursday report, "Chávez Launches Hemispheric, "Anti-Hegemonic" Media Campaign in Response to Local TV Networks Anti-Government Bias) which have launched a vitriolic and highly personalized savaging of Chávez over the past few years. In his reports, Fox reporter Steve Harrigan speaks solely with members of the Venezuelan opposition and shows Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice critical of Chávez. Of course, Fox News has the right to present the news as distortedly as it sees fit. However, its exclusive adherence to anti-Chávez sources completely caricatures the station's claim to be "fair and balanced." In fact, when it comes to Venezuela, it strives to be a propaganda mill.
Full: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.30.05 @ 04:46 PM CST [link]

Abduction, Often Violent, a Kyrgyz Wedding Rite


BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - When Ainur Tairova realized she was on her way to her wedding, she started choking the driver.

Her marriage was intended to be to a man she had met only the day before, and briefly at that. Several of his friends had duped her into getting into a car; they picked up the would-be groom and then headed for his home.

Once there, she knew, her chances of leaving before nightfall would be slim, and by daybreak, according to local custom, she would have to submit to being his wife or leave as a tainted woman.

"I told him I didn't want to date anyone," said Ms. Tairova, 28. "So he decided to kidnap me the next day."

Such abductions are common here. More than half of Kyrgyzstan's married women were snatched from the street by their husbands in a custom known as "ala kachuu," which translates roughly as "grab and run." In its most benign form, it is a kind of elopement, in which a man whisks away a willing girlfriend. But often it is something more violent.

Recent surveys suggest that the rate of abductions has steadily grown in the last 50 years and that at least a third of Kyrgyzstan's brides are now taken against their will.

The custom predates the arrival of Islam in the 12th century and appears to have its roots in the region's once-marauding tribes, which periodically stole horses and women from rivals when supplies ran low. It is practiced in varying degrees across Central Asia but is most prevalent here in Kyrgyzstan, a poor, mountainous land that for decades was a backwater of the Soviet Union and has recently undergone political turmoil in which mass protests forced the president to resign.

Kyrgyz men say they snatch women because it is easier than courtship and cheaper than paying the standard "bride price," which can be as much as $800 plus a cow.

Family or friends often press a reluctant groom, lubricated with vodka and beer, into carrying out an abduction.

A 2004 documentary by the Canadian filmmaker Petr Lom records a Kyrgyz family - men and women - discussing a planned abduction as if they were preparing to snatch an unruly mare. The film follows the men of the family as they wander through town hunting for the girl they had planned to kidnap. When they do not find her, they grab one they meet by chance.

Talant Bakchiev, 34, a graduate student at the university in Bishkek, the capital, said he helped kidnap a bride for his brother not long ago. "Men steal women to show that they are men," he said, revealing a row of gold-capped teeth with his smile.

Once a woman has been taken to a man's home, her future in-laws try to calm her down and get a white wedding shawl onto her head. The shawl, called a jooluk, is a symbol of her submission. Many women fight fiercely, but about 80 percent of those kidnapped eventually relent, often at the urging of their own parents.

The practice has technically been illegal for years, first under the Soviet Union and more recently under the 1994 Kyrgyz criminal code, but the law rarely has been enforced.

"Most people don't know it's illegal," said Russell Kleinbach, a sociology professor at American University in Bishkek whose studies of the practice have helped spur a national debate.

The few prosecutions that do occur are usually for assault or rape, not for the abductions themselves. There are no national statistics on how many kidnappings go awry, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that some end in tragedy.

Four days after the sister of one of Mr. Kleinbach's students was kidnapped a few years ago, her body was found in a river. The family that abducted her was never charged with murder.

In Mr. Lom's film, a family mourns a daughter who hanged herself after being kidnapped; they too were unsuccessful in bringing the abductors to trial.

Families use force to keep the women from leaving or threaten them with curses that still have a powerful impact in this deeply superstitious land. Once a girl has been kept in the home overnight, her fate is all but sealed: with her virginity suspect and her name disgraced, she will find it difficult to attract any other husband.

Brutal as the custom is, it is widely perceived as practical. "Every good marriage begins in tears," a Kyrgyz saying goes.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.30.05 @ 09:56 AM CST [more..]

O.A.S. to Pick Chile Socialist U.S. Opposed as Its Leader

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr. 29 - In a rebuff to the Bush administration's efforts to press Latin America to take a tougher stance on Cuba and Venezuela, a Chilean Socialist emerged Friday as the consensus choice to become secretary general of the Organization of American States.

The O.A.S. is scheduled to convene in Washington on Monday to formally elect the Chilean, Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, 62. His opponent, Luis Ernesto Derbez, the Mexican foreign minister and Washington's favored candidate, withdrew Friday afternoon after negotiations in Santiago, Chile, that involved Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and several of her South and Central American counterparts.

It is the first time in the organization's history that a candidate initially opposed by the United States will lead the 34-member regional group. Until it became clear that the numbers were not in its favor, the United States sought twice to block Mr. Insulza, by first supporting a Salvadoran and then Mr. Derbez.

The selection process was dogged by contention and deadlock for months. It finally came to balloting on April 11, but five rounds of voting all ended in a 17-to-17 tie between Mr. Insulza and Mr. Derbez, split largely along North-South lines.

American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory.

But some South American diplomats suggested Friday that the shift in the United States position was a calculated retreat in response to warnings to Ms. Rice in Brazil and Colombia earlier in the week that Washington was risking a potentially embarrassing loss.

"Secretary Rice has supported a consensus, and therefore the candidate of the United States is now me," Mr. Insulza said at a news conference with Ms. Rice and Mr. Derbez on Friday. "For that reason, nobody should feel defeated."

Mr. Insulza also said the organization must broaden its mission and begin to "hold governments that are not governed democratically accountable" for their actions. Aides to Ms. Rice said she had insisted on such language, which is clearly aimed at President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the most outspoken South American critic of the Bush administration.
Full: nytimes.com

In what sense is Venezuela 'not governed democratically'?
rootsie on 04.30.05 @ 09:50 AM CST [link]

The $6.66-a-Gallon Solution

OSLO, April 23 - Car owners in the United States may grumble as the price of gasoline hovers around $2.25 a gallon. Here in Norway, home to perhaps the world's most expensive gasoline, drivers greeted higher pump prices of $6.66 a gallon with little more than a shrug.

Yes, there was a protest from the Norwegian Automobile Association, which said, "Enough is enough. "

And a right-wing party in Parliament, the Progress Party, once again called for a cut in gasoline taxes, which account for about 67 percent of the price.

But "those critics are but voices in the wilderness," said Torgald Sorli, a radio announcer with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation who often discusses transportation issues. "We Norwegians are resigned to expensive gasoline. There is no political will to change the system."

Norway, the world's third-largest oil exporter, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia, has been made wealthy by oil. Last year alone, oil export revenue surged 19 percent, to $38 billion.

But no other major oil exporter has tried to reel in its own fuel consumption with as much zeal as Norway. These policies have resulted in Norwegians consuming much less oil per capita than Americans - 1.9 gallons a day versus almost 3 gallons a day in the United States- and low car ownership rates. On city streets and rural roads, fuel-efficient Volkswagens and Peugeots far outnumber big sport utility vehicles.
Full: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.30.05 @ 09:44 AM CST [link]
Friday, April 29th

White farmer found guilty of throwing black worker to lions in South Africa

A white South African farmer and one of his black labourers were found guilty yesterday of murdering a black former employee and throwing him to a pride of lions.
Mark Scott-Crossley and Simon Mathebula, who both pleaded not guilty and blamed each other for the murder, tied up Nelson Chisale, beat him with machetes and dumped him in an enclosure for rare white lions in northern Limpopo province.

Investigators found little more than a skull, a few bones and a finger

...South Africa has been gripped with morbid fascination by the case, which has inflamed black anger against white farmers in a country still coming to terms with its apartheid past.

...Much of the testimony revolved around whether Scott-Crossley, 37, ordered the killing - as his workers claimed - and whether Chisale was still alive when he was thrown to the lions.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Happy Valley heir on murder charge
The heir to one of Kenya's biggest white-owned estates was charged yesterday with the murder of a game warden on the family's Rift Valley farm. The Hon Thomas Cholmondeley, 37, scion of the most prominent British settler family in Kenya, pleaded not guilty to the fatal shooting of a plainclothes warden.

Police claim that Cholmondeley opened fire with a Luger pistol on a Kenya Wildlife Service warden, Simon Ole Stima, who was sitting in an unmarked car while two of his colleagues investigated a farm slaughterhouse suspected of preparing illegal game meat.

...The murdered warden was a Masai, and the case has stirred up fresh tension between white landowners and the Masai, who are campaigning to reclaim land occupied by white settlers in the colonial era.
Full: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.29.05 @ 10:23 AM CST [link]

Pope, Reviving Weekly Audience, Stresses Europe's Christian Roots

ATICAN CITY, April 27 - The normal rhythms of the Vatican began returning Wednesday as Pope Benedict XVI held the traditional weekly papal audience, using the moment to express what may become a central theme of his papacy: the Christian roots of Europe.

Addressing thousands of pilgrims on a brilliant morning in St. Peter's Square, he explained that he had chosen the name Benedict for several reasons, among them the role that St. Benedict of Norcia in Italy, the sixth-century author of the monastic "Rule" that led to the founding of the Benedictine order, had on spreading Christianity in Europe. Benedict is one of the patron saints of Europe.

"He represents a fundamental point of reference for the unity of Europe and a strong reminder of the unrenounceable Christian roots of its culture and civilization," the pope said in Italian, one of at least six languages he used on Wednesday.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he was chosen pope last week, he wrote often of his worries that Europe had forgotten its Christian roots and therefore was in danger of losing its identity and spiritual grounding.
Full:nytimes.com

ha.
rootsie on 04.29.05 @ 10:03 AM CST [link]

Pope, Reviving Weekly Audience, Stresses Europe's Christian Roots

ATICAN CITY, April 27 - The normal rhythms of the Vatican began returning Wednesday as Pope Benedict XVI held the traditional weekly papal audience, using the moment to express what may become a central theme of his papacy: the Christian roots of Europe.

Addressing thousands of pilgrims on a brilliant morning in St. Peter's Square, he explained that he had chosen the name Benedict for several reasons, among them the role that St. Benedict of Norcia in Italy, the sixth-century author of the monastic "Rule" that led to the founding of the Benedictine order, had on spreading Christianity in Europe. Benedict is one of the patron saints of Europe.

"He represents a fundamental point of reference for the unity of Europe and a strong reminder of the unrenounceable Christian roots of its culture and civilization," the pope said in Italian, one of at least six languages he used on Wednesday.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he was chosen pope last week, he wrote often of his worries that Europe had forgotten its Christian roots and therefore was in danger of losing its identity and spiritual grounding.
Full:nytimes.com

ha.
rootsie on 04.29.05 @ 10:01 AM CST [link]

Zimbabwe's Role in U.N. Rights Panel Angers U.S.

UNITED NATIONS, April 27 - Zimbabwe was re-elected Wednesday to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, a panel that Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed abolishing because of its practice of naming known rights violators to its membership.

Zimbabwe's selection as one of the 15 countries winning three-year terms drew protests from Australia, Canada and the United States, with William J. Brencick, the American representative, saying the United States was "perplexed and dismayed by the decision."

In a speech to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, Mr. Brencick said Zimbabwe had repressed political assembly and the news media, harassed civil society groups, conducted fraudulent elections and intimidated government opponents.
Full:nytimes.com

Sounds like they would fit right in, doesn't it?

Blair is More of a Devil Than Mugabe
Full: allafrica.com
rootsie on 04.29.05 @ 09:44 AM CST [link]

Doomsayers Say Benedict Fits World End Prophecy

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict's ascent to the papacy took a conclave of 115 cardinals, four rounds of voting and followed a lifetime of service to the Vatican.

But ask Internet doomsayers eyeing a 12th century Catholic prophecy and they'll tell you it was all stitched up more than eight centuries ago and that judgment day is nigh.

The prophecy -- widely dismissed by scholars as a hoax -- is attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop recognized by members of the Church for his ability to read the future.

Benedict, believers say, fits the description of the second-to-last pope listed under the prophecy before the Last Judgement, when the bible says God separates the wicked from the righteous at the end of time.

"The Old Testament states: 'believe his prophets and you will prosper' -- so believe it. We are close to the return of the Judge of the nations. Christ is coming," wrote one Internet post by the Rev. Pat Reynolds.

"Thank God for the witness of St. Malachy."

St. Malachy was said to have had a vision during a trip to Rome around 1139 of the remaining 112 Popes. The new pope would be number 111 on that list, and is described in a text attributed to St. Malachy as the "Glory of the Olive."

To connect Benedict, a pale, bookish German, to anything olive takes some imagination. But Malachy-watchers point to the choice of the name Benedict -- an allusion to the Order of Saint Benedict, a branch of which is known as the Olivetans.

"When (he) chose the name Benedict XVI, this was seen as fulfilling the prophecy for this pope," wrote one entry on www.wikipedia.org.
Full: news.yahoo.com

psy-ops
rootsie on 04.29.05 @ 08:38 AM CST [link]

Pursuer of Mexican Leader's Opponent Quits Under Fire

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico, April 27 - The legal proceedings that threatened to knock Mexico's most popular politician off next year's presidential ballot and to plunge this country into turmoil seemed to come to a sudden end on Wednesday night, when a beleaguered President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of his attorney general and a review of the government's case against the politician.

In a nationally televised address, Mr. Fox said he had accepted the resignation of Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, who oversaw the prosecution of the politician, Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico City, and thus became one of the most polarizing figures in the government.
Full: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.29.05 @ 08:34 AM CST [link]
Wednesday, April 27th

Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death

by John Ross
As the death gurgles of Terry Schiavo and Pope Wojytla grew more agitated and the media drumbeat pumped up maximum ratings for their mutually Christian agonies, some kindred soul climbed Galeras Mountain above Saltillo city in the great Coahuila desert and set fire to a 50-foot fiberglass figure of Jesus Christ. The immolation could be viewed from downtown Saltillo – only Jesus' left arm survived the blaze. It has since become a local relic, housed in the city's cavernous cathedral.

On the other side of the border where the United States of North America suffered an evangelical coup d'etat last November, no Jesus-burnings have yet been reported despite mounting disgust at such excesses of the Christian coup as the ugliness wafting about the human vegetable formerly known coast to coast as Terry Schiavo,

The Schiavo spectacle featured withering hatred between loved ones, demagoguery run riot, and crazed Catholic zealots, Born-Agains, and Not-Dead-Yets holy rolling around on the Florida hospice's manicured front lawn. The 24-7 media circus was ringmastered by that indefatigueable exterminator Tom Delay of Sugarland, Texas who parlayed the hysteria into an unprecedented congressional vote that put the legislative branch on a train wreck course with the Constitution.

Perhaps the culminating moment of this reality freak show came when, flanked by burley leftist bodyguard monks from St. Paul, Terry's parents tried to get the brain dead woman to pronounce the words "I want to live." "AHHH WAAAAAAA" was as far she got reported the Associated Press – it is not known how the agency determined the exact number of "h"s and "a"s. Although Terry was not a southern gal, the "ah wahs" have a decided downhome lilt to them and have been open to many interpretations including "ah wahnt out of here" and "ah wahnt to kill Tom Delay."

Whatever she was seeking to annunciate (the medics described it as an involuntary moan), by April Fool's Day – assuming I was not perusing one of those joke facsimile editions of major American newspapers (remember Not-The-New York-Times?) - Schiavo was pronounced really dead. Her bereaved family celebrated her demise by leasing the list of those who contributed cash to keeping her "alive" for the past 15 years to a Christian direct mail advertiser for $4000 a month. It is reported that receipts from every Terry Schiavo tee shirt and coffee mug hawked outside the hospice were directed into the legal battle aimed at wresting the malpractice moolah from that Devil Incarnate, the evil husband Michael Schiavo.

The death carnival was full tilt in St. Peter's Square too and the trinket venders were cleaning up on John Paul memorabilia. In the inner sanctums of the Vatican, most every political poltroon on the planet passed silently by the bier of the demised pontiff, shedding crocodile tears and stabbing each other in the back as they cloaked their sins in Wojytla's death shroud.

With the vaults of the Bank of the Vatican reportedly bare and the Holy See running deeply in the red due to the diminishment of believers in the Roman Catholic product and humungous payouts in pederast priest scandals, the Church mavens missed a good bet by not selling tickets to these macabre events. This is not just a modest proposal – tickets to several of John Paul II's last appearances were backed by coupons for Big Macs, and just before his death, the late Pontiff blessed 7000 cell phone photos in a last-ditch promotion to replenish emptying donation baskets.
The requiem Mass presided over by former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law would have been a big-ticket item. Law, who was forced to flee his archdiocese after evidence emerged that he moved up to 80 pederast priests from parish to parish to elude police detection, was extended sanctuary in the Vatican by the late Pope.

Protestors disrupted the mourning for John Paul to demand the ironically named Churchman be brought back to Boston to face justice.

Leading the U.S. delegation to this funerary fiesta (if leadership is to be measured by how much ink one accrues) was the unavoidable Tom Delay. The House Majority leader, who reportedly unplugged his dear old dad, a rugged oil wildcatter, after a household accident, utilized the Pope's sarcophagus as a pulpit to rail against "activist" judges and their war on the Judeo-Christian Faith.

Sadly, there are no activist judges anymore – Bruce "Cut 'Em Loose" Wright passed away just recently - he is the only member of the North American judiciary I would have voted to keep artificially alive.

Representative Delay's arrival in Rome obeyed his staunch ecumenical convictions – the humility-challenged Republican's belief system appears to be a heady mix of Apocalyptical Zionism, fundamental Jesusism, and firm faith in pest control. The Holy Land for the Texas Exterminator seems to be the launching pad for the End Times, the pathway to the Rapture, and he is, of course, a high profile partisan of Ariel Sharon and those to his right in their crusade to eradicate the pesky Palestinians as if they were so many household pests.

As the "lives" of Schiavo and Wojytla wound down, Oxfam activists installed a large billboard clock near the World Bank where the Masters of the Universe were in annual spring session. Tick Tick Tick. Oxfam advised the bigwigs that every three seconds a child dies somewhere in the world. Tick. Tick. Tick. Mostly, they die because they do not have a life support system. Tick Tick Tick. You know, stuff like air, water, food, housing, and medicine. Tick Tick Tick. Entitlements that in the third world the poor fight revolutions to obtain. Tick Tick Tick. Another kid dead. Tick Tick Tick. Another $125,000 USD gobbled up by Citigroup, a million dollar a minute corporation. Tick Tick Tick.

It is not known exactly when Pope Wojytla expired. He is believed to have been on life support for many years, pumped full of steroids and monkey glands and dopamine to control the trembles, and injected daily with the blood of virgins held captive in the Vatican basement. But the machinery was always breaking down, often before millions on television although, like the emperor and his new duds, no one dared to mention the degradation of the Pope's mortality. Once the Clear Channel Pope, a Great Communicator of Ronald Reagan dimensions, he had slipped so deeply into dementia that he was now unintelligible in the 13 languages he allegedly once spoke. Now His Holiness was pissing all over the Popemobile and refusing to wear diapers!

That's when Ratzinger stepped in and had his throat slit, an "emergency tracheotomy", arrrgghhh. What else could he do? The man was making a mockery of the One True Church. After that, they couldn’t even get a feeding tube down poor John Paul's guggle.

Much as with the late Pope, it is not easy to know how many members of the College of Cardinals are maintained on life support systems but as Cardinal Ratzinger moved to grab power, at least 77 of the Men In Purple proved to be brain dead. After a few half-hearted puffs of indeterminate emissions from the famous Fumata (doesn't the city of Rome have air pollution standards?), a member of Hitler Youth and a foot soldier in Adolph's army who knew just where the Nazi death camps were located, was chosen as God's representative on earth. With Arnold in the White House and Ratzinger in the Pope House, it looks like the Aryan Nation won the war after all.

Ratzinger's selection settled over the world like a pall. Those who had anticipated a pope of color - Latin America accounts for half the Roman Catholics in this part of the galaxy – had foolishly underestimated the racism entombed in the bosom of Holy Mother Church. As dispensation to the disillusion, Chilean Cardinal Jose Agustin Medina was pushed out on the balcony to sound the time-honored cry "We have a Pope!" Cardinal Medina is (was) Augustin Pinochet's favorite priest.

Benedictus XVI had operated as Wojytla's ventriloquist since 1981 when he took over the Congregation for the Defense of the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Santa Inquisition, and began to dismantle Vatican II, the historic accord hammered out by the Peoples' Pope, John XXIII, that insisted upon the Church's option for the poor. Ratzinger's promotion to the throne of Peter and the installation of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank are indeed ominous tidings for the world's poor.

Exactly how many disobedient priests were drawn and quartered or burnt at the stake during Ratzinger's reign of terror at the Congregation is not a matter of public record but at least 140 were silenced or defrocked, precisely for espousing the Church's option for the poor, amongst them the exalted theologian Hans Kung who once gave the then-liberal Ratzinger (he now sits to the right of Opus Dei) his first teaching job. Also bopped was the bushy-bearded Brazilian Leonardo Boff who Ratzinger silenced and drove from the Church. Boff bemoaned Ratzinger's elevation as the worst move the Church fathers (there are no mothers) could have made. "Cardinal Ratzinger is hated by the bishops, many of whom he has publicly humiliated for years," Boff avowed in a recent El Pais interview.

As the keeper of the dogma, the Terminator Pope made a hobby out of hunting down practitioners of liberation theology. Among his trophies: the Nicaraguan poet-priest Ernesto Cardenal who Wojytla trampled into the tarmac at Managua International Airport in 1984, and Don Samuel Ruiz, the beloved bishop emeritus of Chiapas.

Ratzinger once accused the World Council of Churches of fomenting subversion in Latin America and his orthodox convictions coincide with CIA doctrine that miscreant liberationists threaten Washington's hegemony in the Americas.

The self-anointed Benedictus XVI is a kind of Teutonic John Ashcroft who promulgates edicts barring mariachis and indigenous dancers from performing during Mass (an instruction widely disregarded in Mexico.) Ratzinger's persecution of Don Samuel who he accused of preaching a Marxist version of the Gospel, led him to attack the indigenous church that Tatik nurtured during 40 years as head of the San Cristobal diocese as "a stalking horse for Marxism-Leninism." In his eagerness to nail Samuel to the cross, he even sent his inquisitors deep into the Lacandon jungle to gather evidence that the Bishop was ordaining women deacons.

For a quarter of a century, the new Pope has waged a personal war against syncreticism, the Indian church, woman priests, abortion providers, gays and lesbians, and above all, the Dread Condom. Although his predecessor has been nominated for sainthood for having once miraculously cured a man with terminal pain in his brain, Wojytla's candidacy must be nullified by the millions of AIDS deaths his condemnation of condom use incurred.

Despite being dead from the neck down, the celibate Ratzinger feels so full of the Lord that he never tires of damning sexual intimacies left of the missionary position. He rails against same sex marriage, pre-marital sex, birth control pills, and the liberation of women. Nevertheless, the new Pope and his predecessor Wojytla failed to notice decades of pederasty in the priesthood on their watch, even when Father Marcial Macial, founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, was buggering small children behind locked Vatican doors. Some of Macial's victims reported that the good father told them he had a papal dispensation to sodomize them.

In response to allegations that he had purposefully ignored Father Macial's sins for years for fear of disaffecting John Paul who particularly favored the sodomite, Ratzinger assailed media coverage of pederast priest scandals as "an attack on the Church."

The 265th in a long line of Machiavellian tyrants, poisoners, and pederasts, Ratzinger is the wrong pope in the wrong time zone. Confronted with onrushing Islam, Ratzinger lobbied the European Union to exclude the swarthy Turks because he considered Europe to be "a Christian continent." No wonder the Gray Wolves took a shot at his pal Wojytla.

Pope Ratzo insists that the Church of Rome is the only true church, sneers at Protestant denominations as "sects", and has written that the Jews bear the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (although he doesn't think they should have gotten the gas chamber for it.)

Perhaps the only consolation for humanity in this catastrophic appointment is that, at 78, Benedictus XVI is the oldest pontiff to be selected since the 18th century. Like many of us old people, he sometimes loses track of where he is at – often mixing up the 21st century with the Middle Ages. On the eve of the Cardinals' conclave, he stirred souls by dissing godless Communism, apparently unaware that the Berlin Wall had come down in 1989.

The new Pope's selective memory loss is cited by critics reviewing Ratzinger's autobiography, which seems to omit an uncle who was in the concentration camp business and important Nazi slaughters of dissidents near his hometown in Bavaria. Nor does the volume mention his ties to Bank of Vatican insider Roberto Calvi, found dangling from London's Blackfriers r Bridge in 1984.

Although Ratzinger was low down on the papal totem pole when John Paul I, the last Italian pope, came to the throne in 1978, his Borgia-esque death 30 days later propelled both Wojytla and Ratzinger into the papacy.

It is not known at what level of the living dead the new pope functions – he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1991 and his health is not robust. Moreover, stocks of virgin blood stored in the Vatican basement have been greatly diminished by prolonged efforts to keep John Paul II "alive." That famous Not-the-New York Times headline after the first Pope John Paul took a dive, may soon be revived: "POPE DIES AGAIN!"

All of this shameless huckstering of death and dying has made drawing up one's living will an urgent priority. To my mind, these living wills should be transformed into political manifestoes, our final rant to the rest of the world, and a call for direct action. Why lay around dying at home when you can be out there dedicating your corporeal remains to smashing the church and the state!

Here is my living will.

"When I, John Ross, become so debilitated by terminal illness, and the consumption of opiate-derived drugs no longer quells the pain, and/or when I am rendered helpless by disease, intentional violence, or a freak accident, I ask that a guardian be appointed who will strap dynamite to my cadaver, wheel me to the designated capitalist target and light the fuse.

"The burning of my body Bonze-style would be an acceptable alternative to such sabotage but only if I am propped up in front of a recognizable emblem of U.S. imperialist domination while I roast.

"Say no to war and world hunger, racism, sexism, Capitalism, and all other isms that get in the way of the peoples' struggle to control their own destinies. There is no peace without justice. Hasta La Victoria Siempre! Bye Bye."
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:50 PM CST [link]

The Frauds of the Clergy

by Thom Hartmann
Why would a multi-multi-millionaire Senator, who consistently votes to harm the hungry and the poor who so concerned Jesus, join forces with religious fundamentalists to stack this nation's highest courts? Could it be because he and his wealthy Republican friends see huge financial benefits for themselves and their corporate patrons in a compliant court?
At the "Justice Sunday" event hyped to national prominence by Bill Frist's appearance, Chuck Colson told America that we should read the Federalist Papers to understand the intent and the mind of the Founders.

Apparently Colson overlooked Federalist 47, published by James Madison on February 1, 1788. Titled, "The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts," Madison wrote about how important it was that the different branches of government serve as checks and balances on each other.

"No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty," wrote Madison of the concern about any one particular group dominating all branches of government. He added, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:44 PM CST [link]

Researchers Say They Achieved Nuclear Fusion in Tabletop Experiment

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A tabletop experiment created nuclear fusion -- long seen as a possible clean energy solution -- under lab conditions, scientists reported.

But the amount of energy produced was too little to be seen as a breakthrough in solving the world's energy needs

For years, scientists have sought to harness controllable nuclear fusion, the same power that lights the sun and stars. This latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field. While falling short as a way to produce energy, the method could have potential uses in the oil-drilling industry and homeland security, said Seth Putterman, one of the physicists who did the experiment at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Full:nytimes.com

'fruitless labors', 'rootless science' (F.G. Lorca, in New York, 1930)
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:40 PM CST [link]

Earnings at BP Increase 29% on the Strength of Oil Prices

BP,the world's second-biggest publicly traded oil company, posted a 29 percent jump in first-quarter profit, helped by higher energy prices.

Net income rose to $5.49 billion, or 25.6 cents a share, excluding gains in the value of its oil inventories, BP said yesterday. Revenues rose 16 percent, to $79.8 billion, from a year earlier.

BP, which is second to the Exxon Mobil Corporation, is the first of the world's large oil companies to report earnings from the first quarter, when New York crude oil averaged $57.60 a barrel, natural gas prices rallied in the United States and Europe and gasoline prices surged.
Full:nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:35 PM CST [link]

Iraq rebels 'as strong now as a year ago'

There was a three-fold increase in terrorist attacks worldwide last year and Iraqi insurgents have the same capacity to strike that they did 12 months ago, according to the US government and military.
The number of terrorist attacks the US considers "significant" rose to 655 in 2004 from 175 in 2003, according to US state department figures released by a senior Democrat in congress.

That total - based on a briefing from government officials - takes in the Belsan school siege, violence linked to fighting over Kashmir and a surge in terrorist incidents in Iraq.

The tally for Iraq, one of the drivers of the increase, leapt from 22 attacks in 2003 to 198 in 2004, a figure confirming the bloodiness of the insurgency for much of that year.

The period after the January 30 election was one of relative calm, but the number and frequency of attacks has risen in recent weeks with the long impasse over forming a new government.

General Richard Myers, the most senior US soldier, said last night that Iraqi insurgents were now launching attacks at the same rate of 50-60 a day rate as they were in 2004.

"I think their capacity stays about the same. And where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago," he said, adding that it was vital the political process went forward.
Full:guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:32 PM CST [link]

Mexico City Mayor's Supporters Speak With Quiet March

MEXICO CITY, April 24 - A capital typically clogged with traffic was thronged Sunday by hundreds of thousands of people who marched into the main plaza to protest a government effort against Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador that threatens to force him out of next year's presidential elections.

The police estimated that more than one million people participated in the march. Aides to the mayor estimated that there were 750,000 people. Several political observers described it as the biggest in the country's recent history.

After two weeks of heated political discourse and confusing legal maneuvers, the march was not the first to denounce the government's campaign against the mayor. But it was a dramatic illustration of seemingly growing support for Mr. López Obrador and disappointment in President Vicente Fox.
Full:nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:28 PM CST [link]

Muslim Cleric Found Guilty in the 'Virginia Jihad' Case

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 26 - In the most significant case involving what prosecutors have called the Virginia jihad network, an American-born Muslim cleric was convicted on Tuesday of inciting followers to wage war against the United States just days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

After deliberating for seven days, the jury convicted the cleric, Ali al-Timimi of Fairfax, Va., on all six counts in the indictment, including counseling others to wage war against the United States and use firearms and explosives in furtherance of violent crimes. Mr. Timimi, who will remain under house arrest until sentencing on July 13, faces a mandatory life sentence under federal guidelines.

Mr. Timimi, 41, was described by federal prosecutors as a rock star among radical Islamists and the spiritual leader for a group of young men who trained to fight abroad for Muslim causes, including defending the Taliban against American-led forces.

"By his treasonous criminal acts, he has proven himself to be a kingpin of hate against America and everything we stand for, especially our freedom," the United States attorney for eastern Virginia, Paul J. McNulty, said in a statement.

But Mr. Timimi's lawyers and supporters described him as an apolitical cancer researcher and part-time Koranic scholar who viewed himself as a bridge between his conservative Muslim sect and American society.
Full Article:nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:25 PM CST [link]

Thousands of Israelis Pour Into Gaza Strip

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (AP) - Thousands of Israelis poured into the Gaza Strip's main Jewish settlement bloc Wednesday to protest this summer's planned withdrawal, show support for the settlers and bid farewell to the area Israel occupied for 38 years.
Gaza settler leaders said they expect at least 100,000 people, which would make it one of the largest demonstrations since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced the pullout plan last year. Turnout was expected to be bolstered by warm weather and the Passover holiday, when schools are closed and many people are on vacation.
Some settler leaders have expressed hope that the protesters will stay in Gaza to resist the withdrawal. However, Avner Shimon, mayor of the Gaza settlements, said he expected the visitors to leave after Passover.
"People are coming to enjoy themselves, see the place and hug us and to tell us they are with us. I estimate that nobody will remain when it is over," he told Israel Army Radio.
Early Wednesday, the Israeli army closed the main crossing into the Gush Katif bloc of settlements to private cars, allowing only buses through. Army Radio said 1,500 buses were expected to reach Gush Katif.
Full: apnews.myway.com
rootsie on 04.27.05 @ 06:21 PM CST [link]
Monday, April 25th

Einstein’s revolution enters second century

Just after the turn of the century, scientists knew that their fundamental theories weren't quite right — they just didn't know what to do about it.

If we're talking about what happened a century ago, this is where Albert Einstein came to the rescue. During the "miracle year" of 1905, he published five groundbreaking scientific papers that are still sparking innovations 100 years later.

But we could as well be talking about what's happening right now. Over the past decade, physicists have come to appreciate, to an even greater degree than in Einstein's day, just how little they know about how the cosmos works. The latest observations indicate that 95 percent of the universe consists of stuff we don't understand:

Dark matter, which can only be detected through its gravitational effect, makes up about 25 percent.
Dark energy, a property of empty space that seems to be pushing galaxies farther apart at an increasing rate, accounts for the other 70 percent.
"In a sense, it's the ultimate Copernican revolution," says Sean Carroll, a physicist at the University of Chicago. "Not only are we not at the center of the universe — we're not even made of the same stuff as most of the universe is made of."

The current knowledge gap presents "an amazing parallel" between 1905 and 2005, says John Rigden, a physicist at the Washington University of St. Louis who wrote the book "Einstein 1905."

"In 1905, if a person put their hand on top of their desk, they had no idea what their hand was contacting," Rigden says. "In other words, the nature of matter was unknown. Atoms were speculated about, and many people believed in them in 1905, but other people did not.

"Now, today, if you put your hand on top of your desk, you know what your hand is contacting — but that type of matter makes up only about 5 percent of the universe," he says. "One hundred years have passed, and we're still 95 percent ignorant about the material world. I find that amazing."
Full:msn.com
rootsie on 04.25.05 @ 02:39 PM CST [link]

Opus Dei will be in the ascendancy in Pope Benedict XVI's church

One possibility we need to take seriously now that Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope is that Opus Dei represents the future of the Catholic church. I do not like the prospect because Opusdeistas give me the creeps. This is not an admission to make in polite society, I know, but I have never met a single one who seemed to me straightforward. Perhaps this is because I am a journalist and they have had very bad press. If I meet one professionally, they know, and I know, that we are on different sides. I expect them to tell me as little of the truth as they can get away with and to look smug when they've succeeded.
This suspicion has nothing to do with Dan Brown whose books I have never read and never will, unless I end up in hell and find there's nothing else to read. It is not an expression of general anti-Catholic prejudice. Jesuits and Dominicans are men I actively look forward to meeting and am seldom disappointed in. None of my best friends are Catholics, but quite a few of my good friends are, though all are fairly liberal ones who would hate Opus Dei much more than I do. I just do not like secret societies whose members think they have been chosen to do the work of God.

Opus Dei, and the other "movements" as they are known in Catholic jargon, are a twentieth century phenomenon. They are an anti-democratic response to the problem that mass literacy and universal suffrage posed to a hierarchical and authoritarian organisation. The first response of the Vatican was complete condemnation. Democracy, science, liberalism, free thought and even the belief that the church could compromise with these forces were all condemned. They were to be fought in the outside world, and extirpated from within the church. This was the posture of the church when Opus Dei was born, just before the Spanish civil war broke out, and from which it grew.
guardian.co.uk

Weblogs definitely betray the obssessions of their mistresses. I come on both sides from a fairly rabid bunch of anti-Catholic Spaniards, who even before the horrific Civil War which caused so much suffering and death to us, were disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Church. During the war, the priests in our small town blacklisted people suspected of 'collaborating' with the forces of democracy in Spain, and my uncle was arrested and spent years in prison, only to be released into Franco's Spain as a pariah, not allowed to teach, which was his profession. I have another uncle who went to fight at 16 and fell near Madrid, or at least that's what the family heard. He could have survived and been one of the Republican slave/prisoners who built Franco's monstrous monument to the 'glory' of all that useless death. I guess on some level, once a Catholic always a Catholic, because I find myself personally insulted by the appalling hypocrisy and wickedness of the Church. The Opus Dei were Franco's personal priests and John Paul II's mentors. These clowns have NOTHING to say to the world today, having used up their morality long ago. In Africa, they go hand-in-hand with Protestant evangelists spreading the most vicious and constricting version of Christianity ever.
rootsie on 04.25.05 @ 11:46 AM CST [link]
Sunday, April 24th

U.S. Prison Population Soars in 2003, '04

WASHINGTON - Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday.

By last June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3 percent, more than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the past few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said the report's co-author, Paige Harrison. For example, the number of admissions to federal prisons in 2004 exceeded releases by more than 8,000, the study found.

Harrison said the increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences, "three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws for repeat offenders, and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that restrict early releases.
Full: news.yahoo.com

Well somebody has to fill up the beds in the new corporate-owned jails that are popping up everywhere. It's a shame the 'criminals' are not keeping up with the supply. There is an obvious solution, though. Do I even have to say it? Hint: just think of a bunch of criminals we desperately need to have locked up...
rootsie on 04.24.05 @ 11:53 PM CST [link]

Pope 'obstructed' sex abuse inquiry

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a 'clear obstruction of justice'.

The letter, 'concerning very grave sins', was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that once presided over the Inquisition and was overseen by Ratzinger.
Full:guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.24.05 @ 07:39 PM CST [link]

Turbulence on Campus in 60's Hardened Views of Future Pope

TÜBINGEN, Germany, April 23 - For all Pope Benedict XVI's decades as a Vatican insider, it may have been the crucible of a university town swept by student radicalism in the late 1960's that definitively shaped the man who now leads the Roman Catholic Church.

During his Bavarian childhood under the Nazis, Joseph Ratzinger became convinced that the moral authority based in Catholic teachings was the sole reliable bulwark against human barbarism, according to friends, associates, and his biographer, John L. Allen Jr.

But while his deep reading and thinking in theology, philosophy, and history were fundamental to development as a theologian, it was the protests of student radicals at Tübingen University - in which he saw an echo of the Nazi totalitarianism he loathed - that seem to have pushed him definitively toward deep conservatism and insistence on unquestioned obedience to the authority of Rome.

Before he arrived at the university, he had spent most of his time writing books and teaching in the Catholic theology departments of several German universities. His growing reputation was enhanced by the prominent role he was said to have played at the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 to formulate doctrines for the church in the modern world. (It was concluded three years later, under Pope Paul VI.)

When he arrived at Tübingen in southern Germany in 1966, he was widely viewed as a church reformer, a man who wanted to open the church up to dialogue with others in the world.

But in his autobiography, he shows that the Vatican Council also alerted him to what he deemed dangerous liberalizing tendencies from inside the church and to the danger that reform, if not tightly controlled by a guiding authority, can quickly go awry.

"Very clearly, resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive," he writes. Academic "specialists," he complains, were encouraging the bishops to accept dubious assumptions. One of these assumptions was "the idea of an ecclesial sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determined what it wants to understand by church." The idea of the "church from below," which led to liberation theology, was being born and, as he puts it, "I became deeply troubled."

So he was already deeply suspicious of the left wing inside the church, when, in 1966, he joined the Catholic Theological Faculty of Tübingen University.

He had been recruited by none other than the liberal Swiss theologian Hans Küng, the very man who became, and remains, one of his chief political and theological rivals. The experience of the student revolt seemed to confirm every suspicion that Father Ratzinger already nurtured about liberalizing tendencies and the hidden germ of totalitarianism lurking within revolutionary movements.
Full: nytimes.com

Worried about the 'totalitarianism lurking within revolutionary movement' and so chooses the totalitarianism of the Catholic Church.
Some 'intellectual.'
rootsie on 04.24.05 @ 07:34 PM CST [link]
Saturday, April 23rd

Rice changed terrorism report

A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics, it emerged yesterday.

The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has come out every year since 1986, accompanied by statistical tables.

This year's edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004.

Much of the increase took place in Iraq, contradicting recent Pentagon claims that the insurgency there is waning

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.

A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, has written an angry letter about the change to Cameron Hume, the state department's inspector general, arguing that Ms Rice's decision "denies the public access to important information about the incidence of terrorism".

Mr Waxman said: "There appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: favourable facts are revealed while unfavourable facts are suppressed."

Ms Rice's spokesman, Richard Boucher, denied the change was politically inspired and said Ms Rice had decided the statistics would be better handled by the national counter-terrorism centre.

However, intelligence officials said there were no immediate plans to publish the figures.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.23.05 @ 10:59 AM CST [link]

Moussaoui Tells Court He's Guilty of a Terror Plot

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 22 - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person facing a trial in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, pleaded guilty on Friday to participating in a broad conspiracy by Al Qaeda to fly planes into American buildings.

Mr. Moussaoui, wearing a dark-green prison jumpsuit, stood before Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Federal District Court here and said that he was forgoing a trial on the facts and that he understood that his guilty plea meant he might be executed.

But Mr. Moussaoui, 36, a Frenchman of Moroccan heritage who was arrested in August 2001, offered a surprise. He said that despite his guilty plea he had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

Instead, he said, he had been planning to participate in a separate undisclosed plot to fly a plane into the White House at a different time.

In a rambling discourse, he said his role was part of a plan to force the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Muslim scholar who is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to blow up New York bridges and tunnels and other landmarks in 1993.

"I am guilty of a broad conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to destroy the White House," he said, offering a new account of his role in plots that is at odds with the different versions government prosecutors have put forward.

Speaking with a heavy French accent, Mr. Moussaoui said there was nothing in the indictment or the fact sheet to which he assented that demonstrated that he was supposed to participate in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"You can't point to me and say that Moussaoui came to U.S. to participate in 9/11," he said.

He told the court he felt it was important to emphasize that he had not admitted any connection with the Sept. 11 attacks because that would increase the pressure for his execution "when the government brings victim statements to court."

Mr. Moussaoui, who has shunned most of his defense lawyers and has shown himself to be a shrewd student of American criminal law, was referring to the trial he faces on whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, speaking to reporters at the Justice Department shortly after the hearing, said prosecutors would seek the death penalty at the new phase, which will in essence be a copy of what the criminal trial would have been, with both sides presenting their cases before a jury.

"As you know, we are seeking the death penalty in this case," Mr. Gonzales said.

"Moussaoui and his co-conspirators," he added, "were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents on Sept. 11, each one a son or daughter, father or mother, husband and wife."

Mr. Gonzales brushed aside Mr. Moussaoui's statement that he was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The fact that Moussaoui participated in this terrorist conspiracy is no longer in doubt," he said. "In a chilling admission of guilt, Moussaoui confessed to his participation."
Full: nytimes.com

Well no Mr. Gonzales, actually he didn't confess. To suggest that he's trying to avoid the death penalty is ridiculous.
Full: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.23.05 @ 10:56 AM CST [link]

Kurds' Leaders Said to Attempt to Block Shiite

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 22 - Some leading Kurdish political figures are trying to stall the formation of a new Iraqi government in an effort to force out Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite chosen two weeks ago as prime minister, Iraqi and Western officials said.

Such an effort could further delay forming a government at a sensitive time. The past week has seen a sharp increase in insurgent violence, including the downing Thursday of a commercial helicopter that left 11 people dead. One of the victims was apparently executed by the attackers.

American officials say the continuing failure to form a new government - almost three months after elections - could be contributing to the resurgent violence.

The political momentum generated by the elections has "worn off a bit," an American official here said Friday, and that "has given the insurgents new hope. The best thing to undermine the insurgency is to maintain momentum on the political process."

A spokesman for the Kurdish alliance denied Friday evening that there was any effort to unseat Dr. Jaafari. But Kurdish leaders have never been comfortable with religious figures like Dr. Jaafari, the leader of one of Iraq's best-known Shiite religious parties. Any successful campaign against him could derail the pact between the Shiite and Kurdish alliances that emerged two months ago, opening the possibility of a new alignment that would favor more secular figures like the departing prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Full: nytimes.com

If the grand strategy is chaos, everything is understandable.
rootsie on 04.23.05 @ 10:47 AM CST [link]

Howard Dean Becomes Leader of the Other Pro-War Party. Chickens returning to the henhouse.

April 21, 2005 - It didn't take long, the former anti-war presidential candidate has now become the pro-occupation leader of the Democratic Party. Just when a majority of the public is saying the Iraq War is not worth it, Howard Dean the new leader of the Democratic Party is saying: "Now that we're there, we're there and we can't get out."

Like the good partisan he is Dean blames Bush for a war most in his party voted for and an occupation that most in his party recently voted to continue to fund. Of the President Dean said: "The president has created an enormous security problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."

Chairman Dean does not seem to understand that the illegal occupation of Iraq is part of the problem, not part of the solution. In fact, the many fears he expresses regarding pulling out of Iraq are made more likely by the US occupation of Iraq.

According to an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune, Dean claims that an American pullout from Iraq could endanger the United States in any of three ways: by leaving a Shiite theocracy worse than that in Iran, which he called a more serious threat than Iraq ever was; by creating an independent Kurdistan in the north, with destabilizing effects on neighboring Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran and Syria, and by making the Sunni Triangle a magnet for Islamic terrorists similar to the former Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

From his comments, it is evident that Chairman Dean only believes in democracy if the voters support the kind of government the U.S. wants. U.S. officials find a puppet government led by U.S sympathizers preferable to what Iraqis want. Indeed, we find autocratic governments like Saudi Arabia and Egypt preferable to democratic governments that are likely to oppose U.S. interests.

The fears expressed by Chairman Dean indicate that we really don't want a democracy in Iraq.
Full: axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 04.23.05 @ 10:43 AM CST [link]
Friday, April 22nd

US spy inquiry pair fired

An influential pro-Israel lobby group in Washington has fired two senior officials targeted by an FBI inquiry into the leaking of US secrets to Israel.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) sacked its policy director, Steven Rosen, and its Iran specialist, Keith Weissman, after receiving information from investigators looking into how classified information about US policy on Iran was obtained by Israel's government.

Lawyers for the pair issued a written denial of wrongdoing, saying: "Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman have not violated any US law or AIPAC policy. Contrary to press reports, they have never solicited, received or passed on any classified documents."

However, AIPAC, which had vigorously defended its employees against spying allegations since they surfaced last year, quickly distanced itself from their statement.
"The action AIPAC has taken was done in consultation with counsel after careful consideration of recently learned information and the conduct AIPAC expects of its employees," said a spokesman.

The dismissals have come as the federal espionage investigation is reported to be reaching a conclusion. According to US press reports, it focuses on whether a Pentagon official, Lawrence Franklin, provided a draft of a presidential directive on Iran policy and other information to AIPAC, and whether that information was then passed to Israel.

Mr Franklin is an Iran expert who worked for the under-secretary of defence, Douglas Feith, a prominent neo-conservative who is leaving his job this summer. Mr Franklin is still employed by the defence department pending the outcome of the investigation, but no longer in a classified job or in the Pentagon. Neither he nor the AIPAC officials have been charged with any crime.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 01:43 PM CST [link]

President Bush Marks Earth Day

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is celebrating Earth Day with one of his favorite pastimes - working the land.

The president, who often is at odds with environmentalists, was scheduled to celebrate their holiday on Friday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He was to speak at the Cades Cove area near Townsend, Tenn., after some quick restoration work on one of more than a dozen trails that originates there.

``I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty,'' Bush, who spends hours during his down time clearing brush on his Texas ranch, told young people awarded for their environmental work at the White House on Thursday. ``Looking forward to getting outside of Washington.''

Bush is the first sitting president to visit the park since Franklin Roosevelt dedicated it in 1940, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. McClellan said the trip marks the 22nd national park that Bush has visited since taking office, a record for sitting presidents.

McClellan said Bush would use his speech to emphasize the importance of personal environmental stewardship, volunteerism and cooperative conservation efforts.

``One of the greatest responsibilities in a free society is responsible stewardship of our natural environment,'' Bush said at the White House ceremony. ``All of you have taken that duty seriously. You have set a clear and strong example, and you're inspiring others to do their part.''

Environmentalists say Bush is not being a responsible steward by pushing for more timber, oil and gas from public lands and relying on the market rather than regulation to curb pollution.

Bush's ``healthy forests'' law lets companies log large, commercially valuable trees in national forests in exchange for clearing smaller, more fire-prone trees and brush. His ``clear skies'' proposal would give power plants, factories and refineries more time to reduce air pollution. Environmentalists call those labels deliberate misnomers.

But no one disputes that Bush likes to spend his time getting back to nature, especially during his frequent trips to his 1,590-acre Texas ranch. There he'll spend hours fishing and cutting down cedar trees with a chain saw to give the native oaks more water and light.

During a visit to the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles in August 2003, he also did restoration work by shoveling dirt for a few minutes to fix a trail.

Full Article: counterpunch.org

shoveling dirt and cutting down trees...
rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 01:40 PM CST [link]

Sharon's 92 Percent Solution: How the Misperceptions Roll On

by Diane Christison
Imagine my chagrin. While vacationing in beautiful Vancouver, I had my sun-and-mountain reverie interrupted on Tuesday by a New York Times article seeming to give the final word on Ariel Sharon’s plans -- blessed, of course, by George Bush -- for the disposition of Israel’s border with the West Bank and the Israeli settlements inside that territory. The article, by veteran diplomatic correspondent Steven Erlanger, discussed the “small furor” supposedly set off inside the Bush administration by Israel’s announced determination to build 3,500 new housing units in Maale Adumim, the largest of several Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the fact that this new move will unilaterally expand Israel’s borders into the Palestinian territory. But Erlanger gives us the impression that this is not really the disastrous development it might seem. He quotes David Makovsky, of the pro-Israeli think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as saying that after all things are not so bad because Sharon, the Israeli most associated with wanting 100 percent of the West Bank, has now scaled down his sights to only 8 percent. This 8 percent is the proportion of the West Bank to be incorporated on the Israeli side of the separation wall when its new route, approved by the Israeli cabinet in February, is completed.

This was bad enough for my vacation mood, but then come to find out a columnist for Canada’s national newspaper the Globe and Mail, Marcus Gee, picked up the story the next day and, for all of Canada to see, played it as indicating a great breakthrough:

“After decades of blood and tears, a solution to the conflict over the Holy Land is emerging . . . . It is not an entirely just solution. But it is a solution, and it could give both sides what they need most: an independent homeland for the Palestinians and secure borders for Israel. The solution is the work of one man: Ariel Sharon.”

Thus are widespread misperceptions and gross distortions of reality born among a broad segment of the media-savvy public.

Steven Erlanger might be excused for swallowing the unlikely story that the Bush administration is really in anything like “small furor” over Israel’s settlement expansion plans, but it is dismaying to see a correspondent of Erlanger’s caliber allowing himself to be misled by an apologist for the Israeli settlement enterprise like David Makovsky.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 01:36 PM CST [link]

Lecturers vote for Israeli boycott

The Association of University Teachers today voted to boycott two Israeli universities over their failure to speak out against their government.

Delegates at a conference in Eastbourne voted, against the wishes of the executive, for an immediate boycott of Haifa University, which they accuse of restricting the academic freedom of staff members who are critical of the government, and of Bar Ilans University, which has a college in the disputed settlement Ariel.

The boycott, which is now official union policy, will follow a plan prescribed by a group of 60 Palestinian academic and cultural bodies and non-governmental organisations, which calls for British academics to severe links with Israeli institutions but to exempt Israelis who speak out against their government's policies towards the Palestinians.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 12:36 PM CST [link]

Senate OKs $81B for Iraq, Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved $81 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a spending bill that would push the total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion.

Both the Senate and House versions of the measure would give President Bush much of the money he requested. But the bills differ over what portion should go to military operations.

Bush urged a quick resolution of the differences and passage of a bill "that focuses taxpayer dollars on providing the tools our troops and diplomats need now."
Full Article:apnew.myway.com

I heard someone say that for $28 billion a year the basic living, sanitation, and educational needs for every human on the planet could be met.
rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 12:33 PM CST [link]

Brazil Grants Asylum to Former President of Ecuador

QUITO, Ecuador, April 21 - Brazil has granted asylum to former President Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador, who fled to the Brazilian Embassy here on Wednesday after being removed from office by Congress in a special session.

The ousted president will be flown to Brazil "as soon as possible," the Brazilian ambassador, Sergio Florencia, told Radio Caracól in Bogotá, Colombia, today."

"We are taking the necessary steps with the Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry to finalize procedures to obtain his safe conduct and his transfer to Brazil," Mr. Florencia added.

On Wednesday, Congress swore in Vice President Alfredo Palacio, a 66-year-old cardiologist, to replace Mr. Gutiérrez, 48, a former army colonel who had faced mounting street protests against what critics called an illegal overhaul of the Supreme Court.

Mr. Gutiérrez, who took office in January 2003, became the third president since 1997 to be ousted from power in the small but oil-rich Andean country, which has close economic ties to the United States. In 1997, Abdalá Bucaram was declared mentally unfit to govern and fled into exile. In 2000, President Jamil Mahuad was ousted in a coup supported by Mr. Gutiérrez, then an army colonel.

Ecuadorean protesters accused all three of corruption, mismanagement and a strong-arm governing style.

"Today, the dictatorship, the immorality, the arrogance and the fear have ended," Dr. Palacio said in a speech broadcast on Colombia's Caracól radio network. "From today, we will restore a republic with a government of the people."

Dr. Palacio did not say whether he would call new elections. It was also not clear if the majority of Congress and the Ecuadorean public would support him as he tries to steer the country out of paralysis. Ecuador does not have a Supreme Court - the Congress disbanded it on Sunday - and its myriad political parties are bitterly divided.

"Logic would have it that Palacio would stay the year and a half that remains, organize elections and construct the judicial system," said Adrián Bonilla, a political analyst in Quito, the capital.

Mr. Gutiérrez fled the presidential palace in a military helicopter, infuriating protesters who assumed he would flee the country, as have other former leaders. Demonstrators then closed down Quito's international airport to prevent his escape, while the attorney general's office announced that a warrant had been issued for his arrest for having ordered troops to use violence to put down anti-government demonstrations.

Mr. Gutiérrez, who had run for president as a populist friend of the poor, lost much of his public support almost as soon as he took office. Ecuadoreans were increasingly dissatisfied with his austere economic policies, which had produced a 6 percent growth rate in 2004 but also hardships for ordinary citizens.
Full Article: nytimes.com


rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 12:29 PM CST [link]

You Can Be Too Thin, After All

The latest study of obese and overweight Americans upends much of what we thought we knew about the health dangers of excess poundage. After decades of dire warnings to slim down if we want to survive to a ripe old age, it now turns out that a modest amount of "excess" weight may actually be good for you, while being too thin can be dangerous.

This perplexing message comes from a study that looks like the most authoritative analysis yet of the relationship between mortality and the "body mass index," a measure that correlates weight to height.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Come on. I just had an emaciated young girl in my office yesterday who is dying from anorexia/bulimia. There is not a soul in the world who can convince her she is not grossly fat. This obssession we have with slenderness is literally killing many young women. Anyone who's paying minimal attention should know "you can be too thin." This flippant tone is offensive.
rootsie on 04.22.05 @ 12:24 PM CST [link]
Thursday, April 21st

Warning on spread of state surveillance

Governments are building a "global registration and surveillance infrastructure" in the US-led "war on terror", civil liberty groups warned yesterday.
The aim is to monitor the movements and activities of entire populations in what campaigners call "an unprecedented project of social control".

The warning came from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, including the American Civil Liberties Union, and Statewatch, a UK-based bulletin which tracks developments in the EU.

They point to the system whereby all visitors to the US are to be digitally photographed and fingerprinted. The EU has agreed that member states must fingerprint all passport holders by the end of 2007. The information will be held on databases.
National ID cards, they warn, will become a "globally interoperable biometric passport". The setting up of airlines' passenger name records (PNRs) could include more than 60 different kinds of information, including meal choices which could reveal personal, religious or ethnic affiliations.

The US and EU governments are expanding legal powers to eavesdrop and to store the product of intercepted personal communications, the groups warn.

They also point to an agreement between Europol - the EU's incipient police headquarters - and the US giving what they say will be an unlimited number of American agencies access to sensitive information on the race, political opinions, religious beliefs, health and sexual life of individuals.

The groups point to increasingly close cooperation between national police, security, intelligence, and military establishments.

To achieve their ends, they say, governments have suspended judicial oversight over law enforcement agents and public officials, concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive arm of government, and rolled back criminal law and due process protections that balance the rights of individuals against the power of the state.

These initiatives, say the civil liberty groups, are not effective in identifying terrorists.
Full Article:guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.21.05 @ 01:17 PM CST [link]

The man with a plan

In a Washington Post review of Jeffrey Sachs's new book The End of Poverty, William Easterly, professor of economics at the New York University, wrote: "It's perhaps fitting that he (Sachs) has enlisted Bono, the lead singer of U2 and development activist, to pen an introduction: the rock star as economist meets the economist as rock star."

Indeed, among Sachs's many talents praised by Bono in that introduction is his natural, rhetorical voice which can enthral audiences.

Sachs is a master of the tone; he knows just when to drop his voice to arouse sympathy, and exactly when to raise the pitch to challenge those he chastises, which these days includes almost anybody who questions the premise of further aid flows in poor countries.
While Sachs's lecture at the London School of Economics last week wasn't like a rock concert, he was certainly the star: the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University received a long ovation when he ended his speech and a serpentine queue formed to have his book autographed.

Like No Logo or Globalisation and its Discontents, Sachs's The End of Poverty is ubiquitous among development practitioners and students fed up with the state of the world. And quite rightly, too.

The dire poverty in which one-sixth of humanity lives is a matter of deep shame. And Sachs eloquently presents their stories, telling us of the nearly 20,000 people who die daily because of extreme poverty; of a grandmother who is looking after nearly two dozen Aids orphans, of women who spend up to seven hours a day walking miles to collect water and cook for the family.

He issues a challenge to the Department of International Development, which wants to sell mosquito nets in malaria-prone regions of Africa as a social marketing experiment. These people can't afford to buy the nets - just give them to them, Sachs pleads.

Sachs has little time for those who talk of tough love; still less for those who are worried that someone will sell the nets on the black market, pocket the money and transfer it to a Swiss bank account. He acknowledges that corruption is a problem, but insists it is not the sole cause of poverty. Many other factors are at work, he says, including bad climate, geography, politics, international trade policies, the burden of debt and the absence of relief.

When the G8 leaders meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July, Sachs wants them to come with their chequebooks. Excuses won't do. States in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) must live up to the widely-accepted standard of 0.7% of gross domestic product to be given as aid.

Few would quarrel with the problems and priorities Sachs identifies; few would question the basic assumption that greater flow of resources is desirable, other things being equal. But the solutions have been tried before.

The question is, will it work now? Sachs suggests that if the detailed suggestions he has made about micromanaging agricultural, health, technological and fiscal policies in the developing world are carried out properly, extreme poverty will vanish by 2025.

To implement his plan, he wants the UN secretary general to run it, involving UN agencies and international financial institutions, by implementing projects funded by donor country contributions, to ensure that the financing gap is always filled.

But isn't that, on a different scale, something the world has already tried, with, to put it politely, mixed success, over the past five decades? Why should fresh cheques be written, to be given to the very entities which were created to solve this problem in the first place, and which haven't had much success to boast of? Sachs has limited time for those who question this vision.

Sachs's economic reforms include shock therapy - which he advocated for Poland and Russia - coupled with a huge transfer of resources to the affected country. But Easterly, who has been an economist at the World Bank, is suspicious of the man with a plan, or what he calls Sachs's "great leap forward".

Easterly knows an ambitious plan when he sees one; he wrote entertainingly of such plans in his sobering book, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, which is a useful reality check of what can be achieved in the real world.

Easterly says Sachs's plan is "strikingly similar to the early ideas that inspired foreign aid in the 1950s and '60s. This legacy has influenced the bureaucratic approach to economic development that's been followed ever since ... Sachs should redirect some of his outrage at the question of why the previous $2.3 trillion didn't reach the poor so that the next $2.3 trillion does."

Bearing that in mind, Easterly calls Sachs a utopian in the Karl Popper sense of the term. An outraged Sachs has called Easterly a dystopian.

It would be convenient to say that the truth lies in between, but it usually does muddle between such extremes. Sachs is right about identifying the problems; but it may be worthwhile pausing and finding out what works where and how, as Easterly suggests, before plunging headlong to commit a huge transfer of funds, if the disappointments of the past are not to be repeated. If they are repeated, it will make it harder to raise resources in future.

· Salil Tripathi is a former correspondent for India Today and the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Sachs's own personal version of 'shock therapy' permanently reduced the Russian economy by 42%. What we're talking about here is micro-management of the economies of 'poor nations' which amounts to little more than totalitarian rule. Big white daddy always has the answers. And then there's the fact that shock therapy doesn't work. Their response: "We didn't shock (read f***) Argentina HARD enough! All we have to do is keep doing what doesn't work and do it HARDER!" But hey Bono loves it, so there's one good thing.
rootsie on 04.21.05 @ 01:12 PM CST [link]

Pakistani army chief rebukes Americans

Cross-border tensions in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida militants erupted into the open yesterday as Pakistan's frontline commander issued a stinging rebuke to the top US general in Afghanistan.

Lieutenant General Safdar Hussain, who leads 70,000 troops in the lawless tribal belt, described as "highly irresponsible" comments by Lieutenant General David Barno that Pakistan was about to launch an anti-terrorist operation.

"He should not have made that statement. It was a figment of his imagination. There is no bloody operation going on until we have the right intelligence," he told the Guardian at his headquarters in Peshawar.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

rootsie on 04.21.05 @ 12:56 PM CST [link]

US accused of trying to block abortion pills

The US government is trying to block the World Health Organisation from endorsing two abortion pills which could save the lives of some of the 68,000 women who die from unsafe practices in poor countries every year.

The WHO wants to put the pills on its essential medicines list, which constitutes official advice to all governments on the basic drugs their doctors should have available.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

rootsie on 04.21.05 @ 12:49 PM CST [link]

S.Africa's Tutu disappointed at Pope choice

CAPE TOWN, April 20 (Reuters) - South Africa's former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Wednesday he was disappointed with the choice of the new pope who was a "rigid conservative" out of step with the times.

Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate and Africa's best-known cleric, criticised both Joseph Ratzinger's conservative views on social issues and doctrinaire defence of the Catholic faith.

"If I had been a cardinal and I had the right to vote I would not have given my vote to the new pope," he told reporters in Cape Town.

"There is a multiplicity of faiths and you've got to be open to the realisation too that Christianity doesn't have a corner on the God market," he said.

Tutu, who had made clear his wish for an African pope, said he hoped the responsibilities of the German cardinal's new position would soften some of his hardline views.

Pope Benedict XVI, as Ratzinger will be known, is expected to continue the late Pope John Paul II's strict defence of Catholic orthodoxy on issues such as birth control, women priests, priestly celibacy, abortion and homosexuality.

Tutu, who helped galvanise international opinion against racist apartheid rule in South Africa, said it was also important the new pope was open to dialogue with other religions, particularly given the increasing popularity of evangelical Christians and Islam in Africa.

"God is not a Christian and we sometimes make out that God is the preserve of one particular faith," he said.

"We need church leaders who are open to interfaith dialogue, who are aware that the truth is not encapsulated only in the Christian faith."

Ratzinger has in the past dismissed other churches as "deficient".
Full Article: alertnet.org
rootsie on 04.21.05 @ 12:38 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, April 19th

On the Vatican Catwalk: Scarlet Surplices, Delicate Lace and Gold Tassels: Cardinal Sins

The Cardinals are lined up behind one another with pious looks on their faces, eyes sedately lowered or raised beatifically, shuffling along in their scarlet surplices with delicate lace trimming. And the gold thread and tassels, the gold or silver crucifixes dangling from their necks; the chunky heavy gold rings on their fingers (the price of which could comfortably feed and clothe every member of a poor village in India or Africa for several years in this capitalist world.)

One by one they place their hands on the open Bible and mutter, swearing their oath of secrecy and move on, sitting sedately in their pews, all having totally ignored the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Swear not at all! - Let your communication be: Yea -- yea; Nay -- nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."

Such blatant disregard of the advice of their supposed lord is breathtaking.

And seeing those cardinals all dolled up in their majestic finery reminds me of Jesus" words:

"Why take ye thought for raiment? Take no thought saying Wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

But they do -- all swanking about in the costliest, gorgeous dresses.

And now the doors close and they are isolated, each with his individual two room suite to relax and 'take advice from the Holy Spirit" in. Twice a day they place their vote on a golden plate which is then tipped into an urn. When a two third majority is reached the holy smoke turns white; we"ll know that one of the "princes" of the Church has said "Accepto" and become the new King.

I found the funeral of the last one a sickening sob-fest. My favorite part was when the open book of the gospels placed on the coffin slammed shut in the wind.
Full Article:counterpunch.org

O yeah there they are with the bling in their tricked out cribs, rockin' the Versace (or whoever designs their gear).
rootsie on 04.19.05 @ 09:38 PM CST [link]

Arch-Conservative German Ratzinger Elected Pope

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Arch-conservative German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope on Tuesday in a surprise choice that delighted traditionalist Roman Catholics but stunned moderates hoping for a more liberal papacy.

Ratzinger, 78, the Church's 265th pontiff, will take the name of Benedict XVI.

He is expected to defend Pope John Paul's strict orthodox legacy and reject changes in doctrine, raising fears that divisions in the Church left by the Polish pontiff will widen.

Ratzinger is the oldest man to be elected pope for three centuries and the first German pontiff for a millennium.

The speed of the election, on only the second day of a secret cardinals conclave, and its result were both a surprise.

Many Vatican experts had said Ratzinger, John Paul's tough doctrinal watchdog for 23 years, was too divisive and too old to become pope.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Ratzinger was 'unwilling participant' in Hitler Youth
BERLIN (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI, the former German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has said he was an unwilling participant in the Hitler Youth movement during World War II.

"As soon as I left the seminary, I did not go straight into the Hitler Youth," Ratzinger said in an interview with German journalist Peter Seewald.

"And that was difficult because in order to qualify for the reduction in schooling fees that I needed, you had to prove you had paid a visit to the Hitler Youth."

When membership of the movement became compulsory in 1941, Ratzinger's older brother Georg joined and the future Pope Benedict XVI was then enrolled, against his will, he has said in a number of interviews.

According to the website of the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club, in 1943, with World War II at its peak, Ratzinger and the rest of his seminary class were drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps, the Flak, although he was still allowed to attend classes at high school in the southern city of Munich three times a week.

In September 1944, having reached military age, he was released from the Flak and returned home, only to be drafted into a labour detail commanded by men he described as "fanatical ideologues", the website said.

In November 1944, he underwent basic training with the German infantry but due to illness he was allowed to skip the most physical aspects of military training.

As the Allied advance drew nearer, Ratzinger deserted the army and returned to the southern town of Traunstein where he had studied at the seminary.

When the US troops reached the town, they used Ratzinger's house as their headquarters.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

And subsequently recruited for the OSS to join the vanguard of the global anti-communist (read fascist) movement? O well, they picked an old one who won't be around for long. I'm sure the guy waiting in the wings is even more ghastly, a Catholic Netanyahu.
rootsie on 04.19.05 @ 09:17 PM CST [link]

Early universe may have been fluid:-

Washington, April 19 : New research suggests that the early universe was a hot, dense liquid made of basic atomic particles, overturning the widely held belief that fiery gas existed immediately after the "big bang" that created the cosmos.

Researchers from the High Energy and Nuclear Physics at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, US, created quark-gluon plasma in a particle collider, Xinhua reported.

Quarks are the most basic particles that make up matter and they are normally bound together. But in their experiment, the researchers smashed two gold ions together at speeds similar to that of light and with such force that it allowed the quarks to separate and roam freely.

The intense collision briefly generated trillion-degree temperatures, an extreme temperature condition thought to have only existed microseconds after the "big bang."

The researchers found that in this environment the quarks behaved like a "perfect" liquid instead of flying around freely like a gas as they expected.

By "perfect" the scientists implied that liquid had the lowest possible viscosity. Viscosity is an internal property of a fluid that offers resistance to flow.

Researchers said the findings had revised the belief of physicists that fiery gas existed microseconds after the "big bang".
Full Article: news.webindia123.com
rootsie on 04.19.05 @ 08:50 PM CST [link]

DeLay Slams Supreme Court Justice

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay intensified his criticism of the federal courts on Tuesday, singling out Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's work from the bench as ``incredibly outrageous'' because he has relied on international law and done research on the Internet.

DeLay also said he thought there were a ``lot of Republican-appointed judges that are judicial activists.''

The No. 2 Republican in the House has openly criticized the federal courts since they refused to order the reinsertion of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube. And he pointed to Kennedy as an example of Republican members of the Supreme Court who were activist and isolated.

``Absolutely. We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous,'' DeLay told Fox News Radio. ``And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous.''
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

So he should do his research by coconut phone? Delay is just incredibly stupid.
rootsie on 04.19.05 @ 08:44 PM CST [link]

CDC: Dangers of being overweight overstated

CHICAGO — Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading preventable causes of death, according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated today that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.

The new analysis found that obesity — being extremely overweight — is indisputably lethal. But like several recent smaller studies, it found that people who are modestly overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight.
Full Article: chron.com
rootsie on 04.19.05 @ 08:38 PM CST [link]
Monday, April 18th

"Bitches'" Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation?

by Sherry Wolf
"BITCH" HAS gone from a sexist epithet to the name of a popular feminist magazine. Liberal newspapers like the New York Times have declared that the latest women's "revolution" is to opt out of the paid workforce and embrace full-time motherhood. Many feminists defend the war on Afghanistan for delivering "liberation" to Afghan women. And now Democrats like Hillary Clinton call for finding "common ground" with opponents of abortion rights. What the hell happened to the struggle for women's liberation?!

Socialist Worker columnist and frequent CounterPunch contributor Sharon Smith doesn't just go after the low-hanging fruit of the right wing to account for the miserable state of working-class women in the U.S., she handily dissects the failings and limitations of the politics of liberalism in Women and Socialism: Essays on Women's Liberation (Haymarket Books, http://www.haymarketbooks.org). In a sharp departure from most current writings on women and sexism, Smith refuses to shy away from political theorizing and takes on debates in anthropology and foreign affairs with a journalistic style that is engaging, fact-filled, and often witty.

In her chapter on "The Origins of Women's Oppression," Smith challenges the main arguments against Frederick Engels' Origins of the Family, State and Private Property and defends the Marxist understanding of the "world defeat of the female sex" as an outcome of the rise of class society. Debates that raged in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s over the origins of women's oppression have long subsided and the view that sexism has always been with us because it is an innate feature of all men now reigns supreme. Many young progressives will be surprised to read that the theory of patriarchy is not the only--or even the most historically accurate--left-wing explanation for sexism.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:44 PM CST [Women's Liberation?">link]

Lopez Obrador, Mexico's Would-Be Mandela, Stares into the Darkness

by John Ross
Andes Manuel Lopez Obrador looked out upon the sea of brown faces flooding the great Zocalo plaza at the heart of this ancient Aztec city and pleaded for peace. Within hours, Mexico's political bosses would strip him of his immunity from prosecution ("el desafuero"), displace him as the extraordinarily popular mayor of the hemisphere's most teeming megalopolis, and bar him from the 2006 presidential ballot ­ and his supporters were not at all happy about it. "No estas solo! No estas solo!" 300,000 throats roared over and over again,"You are not alone!"

The official police count for the April 7th Zocalo rally was 330,000, perhaps the biggest outpouring of support for a politician here since Lopez Obrador's predecessor as the leader of Mexico's electoral Left, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, was swindled out of the presidency 17 years ago.

To consolidate the parallels between then and now, AMLO as he is universally acronymed, would utilize the moment to announce his candidacy for the presidency of this long-suffering republic in next year's elections no matter what his legal entanglements might be by then. The disclosure was anything but a surprise ­ AMLO has been leading his closest rivals in President Vicente Fox's National Action PAN Party and the long-ruling (71 years) PRI since 2003 mid-terms by margins of 10 to 20 points in the most respected polls.

Mexico's civil society has often responded en masse in the face of myriad injustices perpetrated by the nation's political class but the size of the turnout in defense of "El Peje" (for "Pejelagarto", a gar-like fish native to his home state of Tabasco) was remarkable because it came early in the official mourning for Pope John Paul II in a country that insists it is 93% Catholic (Lopez Obrador is himself a member of an Evangelical church.) Despite papal media saturation, the dead pontiff played second fiddle to El Peje in Mexico April 7th.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

Mexico's Fox Won't Pardon Leftist Mayor
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government has ruled out a pardon for the country's most popular politician in the event he is found guilty in a land dispute case, which would prevent him from running for president next year.

Days after a presidential spokesman floated the idea of a pardon for Mexico City's left-wing mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the government quashed it on Monday.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:37 PM CST [link]

Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop

After a game in Toronto last week, Indiana Pacers all-star forward Jermaine O'Neal was asked a blissfully simple question about NBA Commissioner David Stern's desire to see players banned from the NBA before their 20th birthday. A Canadian reporter queried, "Is it because you guys are Black that the league is trying to put an age limit on the draft?" O'Neal, maybe because he was feeling the cool breezes of social democracy, responded freely, without a censor, without a filter, and without approval from his sneaker company.

He said, "In the last two years, the rookie of the year has a been a high school player. There were seven high school players in the All-Star game, so why we even talking an age limit? As a black guy, you kind of think that's the reason why it's coming up. You don't hear about it in baseball or hockey. To say you have to be 20, 21 to get in the league, it's unconstitutional. If I can go to the U.S. army and fight the war at 18, why can't you play basketball for 48 minutes?'' Now the harpies of sports radio have descended upon O'Neal like he tipped over the Pope's coffin in Vatican City. He has been called stupid. He has been told to "just shut up." He has basically been treated like Joseph Massad at a JDL meeting. All of this because he spoke a truth that made much of the US sports media squirm.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:27 PM CST [link]

The Carter-Baker Commission on Elections: Corporate Conflicts of Interest and Bi-Partisan Myopia

The last two presidential elections revealed that American democracy is in distress. A full public airing is much needed and the stature of the Carter-Baker Commission promises to garner the national attention and respect required to truly grapple with the scope of the problem. That is, until people begin to look at the make-up of the Commission and it's agenda.

Perhaps the hottest issue in election reform is making sure that votes are counted accurately. It is now widely understood that paperless computer voting systems are vulnerable to human error, computer failure and malicious tampering and therefore verification of the vote is essential. Paperless electronic voting vs.voting with a voter verified paper ballot (VVPB) is now an issue under consideration in state legislatures across the country. So far, 14 states have passed laws requiring a VVPB, two of those are awaiting the governor's signature.

Sadly, the Carter-Baker Commission has compromised itself at the outset by including a figure with an embarrassing corporate conflict of interest on the key question of vote counts. Ralph Munro is the Chairman of VoteHere, a company with millions invested in the 'vote verification' market. VoteHere is literally banking on the successful marketing of their cryptographic product as the verification method in spite of the fact that voter-verified paper ballots are the solution most recommended by independent computer security experts. Munro should recuse himself to save the Commission from further awkwardness. And, Commission Co-Chair James Baker is invested of the Carlyle Group which owns another voting machine company. The Commission should avoid such improprieties.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

Remember Brimstone Baker fixed Florida for Bush in '00'...
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:22 PM CST [link]

Rich countries to ignore green protests and back big dams

Construction of large dams in developing countries would be subsidised under European commission proposals, despite protests from environmental groups and institutions such as the World Bank.

The large-dam subsidy is part of a package of proposals to give better treatment to renewable energy projects, including solar, wind, tidal, wave and small hydro projects provided to developing countries. It will be presented at a meeting in Paris today of the export credit agencies of the world's 29 richest countries.



Article continues





The proposals, put forward in an EC document marked "confidential" but leaked to the Guardian, suggest that the normal 10-year repayment period for such projects be extended to 15 years so that developing countries can afford the repayments. The export credit agencies, which are subsidised by taxpayers, will guarantee the bills if the countries default.

The proposals include large hydro-electricity projects, which environmental groups and the World Bank do not regard as renewables.

Evidence presented to the World Commission on Dams in 2001 said that methane releases from drowned vegetation in large hydro-schemes adds more global-warming gas to the atmosphere than is saved by not burning fossil fuels in conventional power plants.

The dams commission suggested a number of safeguards, but the World Bank and others have refused to back large hydro projects.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:13 PM CST [link]

Ethiopian Obelisk Begins Return from Rome

AXUM, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Ethiopia's 58-year wait for the return of a plundered national treasure is set to end on Tuesday, when a massive cargo jet flies the first part of the Axum obelisk from Italy to its historic home.
Full Article: reuters
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:09 PM CST [link]

Iraq Officials Retract Statements on Assassination

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said a senior official was assassinated in his home on Monday, adding they had misidentified the official earlier.

They named the dead man as Major-General Adnan Midhish Kharagoli, an adviser to the defense minister. He was killed along with his nephew when 10 gunmen burst into his Baghdad home.

Interior Ministry officials had earlier said the victim was Major-General Adnan Thabet, hours after he told the media that a hostage crisis was exaggerated.

``We made a mistake,'' said one of the officials, who declined to be named.

Such reports of an assassination could fuel sectarian tensions during a time of widespread violence and political uncertainty gripping Iraq.

The comments added to the confusion over reports of a hostage crisis in the town of Madaen, near Baghdad, and reinforced fears of a political vacuum.

Iraq's bickering leaders have failed to form a new government 11 weeks after Jan. 30 elections that politicians promised would deliver stability after two years of suicide bombings, kidnappings and rampant crime.

Senior officials in a leading Shi'ite party have been insisting that Sunni insurgents took up to 150 Shi'ites hostage over the weekend and threatened to kill them unless all Shi'ites left the area.

Those claims were supported by comments by caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Minister of State for National Security Kassim Daoud and Iraqis who waited outside Madean and said they were relatives of the hostages.

But doubts have been growing over the affair since raids by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops failed to produce any evidence of kidnappers or hostages.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:06 PM CST [link]

Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to Forgive

...The age-old rite is what local residents have used when members of one tribe kill members of another. After being welcomed back into the fold, the offender must sit down together with tribal leaders and make amends. After confessing to his misdeeds, the wayward tribesman is required to pay the victim's kin compensation in the form of cows, goats and sheep.

It is a system not unlike those in use in other parts of Africa. Somalis still pay compensation to quell the inter-clan battles in that country, although the traditional rite cannot possibly keep up with all the killings. In northern Kenya, where a recent bout of clan violence resulted in several dozen deaths, tribal mediation became bogged down over complains that the loss of a man's life was compensated for with more cows than for a woman's life.

South Africa managed to put apartheid in its past by insisting on truthful admissions from those who brutalized the country's blacks but then by promoting reconciliation among the races.

A traumatized Rwanda has used both international and local justice to respond to the mass killings of 1994, which left an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, was set up by the United Nations to prosecute the orchestrators of the violence. The many foot soldiers in the slaughter are facing traditional "gacaca" trials, where the community hears their cases and often forgives those who confess.

The Darfur region of Sudan is the subject of a separate investigation by the international court although there it is the government, which has been implicated in the violence, that is pushing for reconciliation methods to be used.

Uganda's government, which backs the international court, has already adopted the traditional notion of forgiveness as one of its peace strategies. An amnesty program in place since 2000 has prompted thousands of rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army and other groups to lay down their arms and re-enter society. A popular radio program broadcast in the north sends the message out that returning rebels will not be executed, to counter what Mr. Kony tells his followers.

"Whoever comes out of the bush is forgiven," explained Lt. Tabard Kiconco, an army spokesman based in Gulu.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.18.05 @ 09:03 PM CST [link]
Sunday, April 17th

Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles takes refuge in the US

Special for Granma International - Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist on the continent, who swore openly in Panama that he would continue to commit criminal acts, has taken refuge in the United States, where he has negotiated the details of his surrender, processing and residence with the US immigration authorities.

According to the Spanish news agency EFE, Posada Carriles has been negotiating his surrender to US authorities for several days. EFE claims that its information comes from “sources” linked to Cuban-American terrorist circles and local TV Station Channel 41 announced the news citing extra-judicial sources. For its part, El Nuevo Herald newspaper cites “a source familiar with the case.”

The Herald article says that Posada was negotiating “the details of his surrender, processing and residence in the United States” with the Department of Homeland Security’s local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Posada is responsible for numerous acts of terrorism, including the mid-flight explosion of a Cubana airliner over Barbados that killed 73 people in October of 1976. Venezuela has applied for his extradition based on those acts, after he escaped in 1985 from San Juan de los Morros prison, 140 km from Caracas, with the help of the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation.

AN INFERNAL HISTORY

An active CIA agent from 1963 as confirmed in documents declassified by the Church Commission, Luis Posada Carriles was in Dallas at the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and more than a few experts suspect that he was one of the snipers who killed the US president.
Full Article: axisof logic.com

Posada Carriles' U.S. asylum application re-opens JFK unsolved assassination case
I am sure it will come as a surprise if I say that Bush has his fingerprints all over this case, but that is purely because of ignorance of the public. And the public is being kept ignorant because the mainstream press does not report on it. But there is ample documentary and testimonial evidence to tie Bush senior to the Bay of Pigs, the anti-Castro cause and the Kennedy assassination. It's beyond the scope of this interview to list that evidence here, but you have to understand that the Kennedy assassination stems from the same forces that were trying to oust Fidel Castro, which were basically Organized Crime, Cuban exiles, CIA and Big Oil in Texas. Bush connects to all four. They all wanted Cuba back and saw the Kennedy's standing in their way.

Their collaboration is now a matter of public record, from the Bay of Pigs, but also in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro. Organized crime was under an unprecedented attack from Robert Kennedy, JFK wanted to abolish the oil depletion allowance and splinter the autonomy of the CIA, and the hawks in the Pentagon found him soft on communism and war. On top of that they blamed him for the failure of the Bay of Pigs, to make it worse he fired the top three men of the CIA. They openly called him a traitor. He was threatening their existence. So he had to go. It is as simple as that. They got rid of him in a coup d' état, displaying an arrogance of power by shooting him from opposite directions in broad daylight, and then lying to the American public in a cover-up that should insult the intelligence of every American who has only remotely looked at the evidence. Even despite the fact that most of that evidence was kept away. Imagine you film the murder of a President today. You could sell it for millions of dollars and it would go over every TV screen in the world. But not in Kennedy's case.

Kennedy wouldn't be President in the first place if he had not made a deal with Giancana to rig his election in Illinois. Nixon lost just barely and he was put forward by Prescott Bush, few people know that. Neither do they know that Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by Kennedy and later member of the Warren Commission, was a close friend. Even less that Nixon, Dulles and Bush had been the architects for the Bay of Pigs under Eisenhower. This can all be documented. Just like his friendship with George Demohrenschildt, who was Lee Harvey Oswald's closest friend in Dallas. Why did Bush never disclose that? Witholding information about a crime is also a crime. Why does he not recall his whereabouts on 11/22/63? When and where did he befriend the Cuban CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, who by the way is Posada's buddy, all the way from the Bay of Pigs to Iran Contra. All those kids with T-shirts of Che Guevara don't know that Rodriguez was his captor and probably his killer.

...Why is it so difficult in grasping that the people who seized power from a coup d'etat, are still in charge today?...
Full Article: axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 04.17.05 @ 08:43 PM CST [link]

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein
...Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate--that was colonialism's seductive promise: "discovering" wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, "the newest and most beautiful words can be written." There is, however, plenty of destruction--countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God). And where there is destruction there is reconstruction, a chance to grab hold of "the terrible barrenness," as a UN official recently described the devastation in Aceh, and fill it with the most perfect, beautiful plans.

"We used to have vulgar colonialism," says Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher with Focus on the Global South. "Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it 'reconstruction.'"

It certainly seems that ever-larger portions of the globe are under active reconstruction: being rebuilt by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial institutions. And from the people living in these reconstruction sites--Iraq to Aceh, Afghanistan to Haiti--a similar chorus of complaints can be heard. The work is far too slow, if it is happening at all. Foreign consultants live high on cost-plus expense accounts and thousand- dollar-a-day salaries, while locals are shut out of much-needed jobs, training and decision-making. Expert "democracy builders" lecture governments on the importance of transparency and "good governance," yet most contractors and NGOs refuse to open their books to those same governments, let alone give them control over how their aid money is spent.

Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times ran a distressing story reporting that "almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding." The dispatch could easily have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times just reported, all of Bechtel's allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in an endless litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could also have come from Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai recently blasted "corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable" foreign contractors for "squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid." Or from Sri Lanka, where 600,000 people who lost their homes in the tsunami are still languishing in temporary camps. One hundred days after the giant waves hit, Herman Kumara, head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent out a desperate e-mail to colleagues around the world. "The funds received for the benefit of the victims are directed to the benefit of the privileged few, not to the real victims," he wrote. "Our voices are not heard and not allowed to be voiced."...
Full Article:commondreams.org

Rethinking Reconstruction: Grand U.S. Plan Fractures Again
For the third time in nine months, the Bush administration has redrafted its project to rebuild Iraq, forcing planners to cancel more of the water, sewage and power plants that were part of the grand American design to transform the shattered country.

Many of the halted projects are now described by American officials as "noncritical" and "long term" because they are scheduled to start two years from now.

The need for the reallocation of money grew not only from unanticipated security costs but also from what many experts said were flawed assumptions by Pentagon planners and Congress when they set out to pepper Iraq with large infrastructure projects built by American companies. The latest changes mean less money being spent on building new facilities and more on training and maintenance, with less reliance on expensive Western firms and more on smaller local firms.
Full Article: nytimes.com

I heard a self-professed 'nation builder' on the BBC who, when asked what the difference is between 19th century British colonialism and the work he carries out in Kosovo and Iraq, replied, 'the difference is that now we have international concensus.' Well needless to say she pushed him on this and he spoke about the UN, stopping the violence, restoring order and so forth. Aside from the fact that there was never a UN resolution on Iraq or Kosovo, it is clear that the attempt is to use the existence of the UN as a way of claiming this illusory 'international concensus' when in reality the same old colonial players are still playing away. And as Naomi Klein points out, this vast global enterprise of 'rebuilding' is just colonialism in another guise.
rootsie on 04.17.05 @ 11:31 AM CST [link]

Boycott threat to Israeli colleges

Jewish groups are alarmed by news that the union representing Britain's university tutors will discuss a boycott of Israeli universities at its annual meeting this week.

If passed, the motion would compel members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) not to visit Bar-Ilan, Hebrew and Haifa universities, until they 'call a halt to all attempts to confiscate land from Palestinian families' and sever links with a 'college located in an illegal settlement in the Occupied Territories'.

Jewish groups say that the motion exposes anti-Israeli bias within the AUT and warn that the action threatens to further inflame tensions at a time when fears of anti-semitism on Britain's campuses are on the increase.

'When you start having this sort of thing you create a culture among academia that makes it acceptable to pick on one side or another,' Danny Stone, campaigns director for the Union of Jewish Students, said. 'It's not what academia should be about.'
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Yeah, Lord forbid academia would take a principled stand.
rootsie on 04.17.05 @ 11:01 AM CST [link]

Brazil's Lula 'sorry' for slavery

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has apologised for his country's role in African slavery while on a visit to Senegal.

He asked for "forgiveness" in a speech at Slave House on Goree Island, from where Africans were shipped between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Brazil imported the most African slaves of any country during that time and only abolished slavery in 1888.

Almost half of Brazil's 180 million population are of African descent.

"I want to tell you... that I had no responsibility for what happened in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries but I ask your forgiveness for what we did to black people," said the president, commonly known as Lula.

Accompanied by Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, he stopped to look through the "door of no return", from where chained Africans would take the dangerous journey across the ocean to the New World.

Some of his delegation shed discreet tears, Reuters news agency reported.

'Historical debt'

Senegal is the last stop on Lula's five-nation tour of Africa.

Along with a large, mostly trade-orientated delegation, he has visited Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea Bissau.

The trip is an indication of the importance the Brazilians are placing on expanding trade ties with other developing countries, say correspondents.

But Lula said he also wanted to build on Brazil's historic ties with Africa.

"It's not just about reaching business deals but it's the strategy of a politician who is conscious of the historical debt towards Africa," he said.
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 04.17.05 @ 10:56 AM CST [link]

Africa hits record growth - IMF

Inflation meanwhile fell to its lowest rate in 25 years.

The IMF said about 20 countries in the region had achieved growth of more than 5%, with inflation of less than 10%.

It warned though that African economies are still not growing fast enough to reach poverty reduction targets and that many are not business friendly.

The report says that oil producing countries such as Angola and Gabon benefited from high oil prices.

Oil importers, on the other hand, have had the pain of the rising price eased by the decline of the dollar - the currency in which oil is priced.

Cotton producers have been badly hit by declining prices.

Poverty targets

The report also says that many countries have followed policies agreed with the IMF - policies that have often proved controversial.

IMF Africa director Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane said the growth figures were an achievement worth mentioning.

"We have almost 20 countries today that are witnessing more than 5% of GDP growth and for the first time in 25 years you have inflation falling to less than 10%," he told the BBC.

However, the improvements recorded in economic performance are not enough to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals for reducing poverty.

Mr Bio-Tchane also said that 16 out of the world's worst 20 countries for business conditions are in sub-Saharan Africa.

The IMF regards a better climate for investment by business as essential for promoting stronger growth and poverty reduction.
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 04.17.05 @ 10:53 AM CST [link]

Ecuador's President Revokes Protest Curbs

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, April 16 - Hours after declaring a state of emergency to quell anti-government protests, President Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador revoked the measure on Saturday. The embattled president had faced thousands of furious protesters who had taken to the streets of Quito, defying the decree, which was limited to the capital, and demanding that he resign.

The president, though, said he would stick with his decision to dissolve the Supreme Court. Late Friday in a televised announcement, President Gutiérrez, with stern-looking military officers standing behind him, told Ecuadoreans that he was instituting a state of emergency and removing the Supreme Court.

The announcement did little to thwart protesters, who took to the streets, banging pots and pans and honking car horns. Though the state of emergency permitted the government to curb civil liberties, like the right to public assembly, the military and police did not take action against the protesters, raising questions about the loyalty of commanders to Mr. Gutiérrez.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.17.05 @ 10:49 AM CST [link]
Friday, April 15th

A bloody revolt in a tiny village challenges the rulers of China


There is a strange new sightseeing attraction in this normally sleepy corner of the Chinese countryside: smashed police cars, rows of trashed buses and dented riot helmets.
They are the trophies of a battle in which peasants scored a rare and bloody victory against the communist authorities, who face one of the most serious popular challenges to their rule in recent years.

In driving off more than 1,000 riot police at the start of the week, Huankantou village in Zhejiang province is at the crest of a wave of anarchy that has seen millions of impoverished farmers block roads and launch protests against official corruption, environmental destruction and the growing gap between urban wealth and rural poverty.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

rootsie on 04.15.05 @ 02:01 PM CST [more..]

A POPE DESCRIBED AS 'FROM THE SUN' WAS BORN DURING ECLIPSE AND LEAVES WITH ONE

He was born during an eclipse (May 18, 1920) and there will be an eclipse, a rare type of partial eclipse, Friday (April 8) on the day of his burial.

And so now eyes have turned more intently to an old prophecy attributed to the Irish monk St. Malachy O'Morgair -- who supposedly foresaw the entire succession of popes by using riddle-like nicknames, with the one fitting the 110th -- John Paul II -- being De Labore Solis, which means "from the labor of the sun."

Indeed, John Paul II was the Pope of Fatima -- where there was the famous "miracle of the sun" -- and reigned during an explosion of other supernatural claims involving solar miracles. Like the sun he came out of the East (Poland). Like the sun he visited countries all around the globe. There was a glow that emanated from him.

Of the sun, yes, and with a stature that means some kind of change of era is coming. This was a giant of a man. This was "Mary's Pope." It was the Pope of her secret. It was as if he was there to prevent or stave off a (long-overdue) chastisement and now he is gone.

The way he died could not have been more dramatic, the "culture of life" Pope dying two days after Terri Schiavo in a benchmark case on the value of life -- she prematurely put to death, in commotion, in terror, he dying with all the dignity with which the old, infirm, and disabled should die.

There was the Pope who had fought for Terri nearing the same end of the road (with even a feeding tube) but in a way that was natural and calm, in a state of prayer, such that he was able to tell his aides he was "happy" and that they too should be happy and then ending his life with Mass, more prayer, and the word, "Amen."

The very way he died was "prophetic." You can't get a much more pointed ending.
Full Article:spiritdaily.com

This is the sort of back-story and drivel with which the minds of 'the faithful' are being poisoned. And we 'paranoids' from way back can't help noticing the masonic calling-cards that whoever these people are are so fond of leaving lying around...All that Sun business.
rootsie on 04.15.05 @ 01:02 PM CST [link]

World Bank and I.M.F. Seek Doubling of Aid to Poor Lands

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund called yesterday for a doubling of foreign aid to poor countries in five years, adding their weight to recent support from other development groups for such increases.

They laid out an agenda for combating global poverty, including calling for debt relief for poor countries and trade reform by rich ones, in a joint 256-page report. The document, which was reviewed by their governing boards, sets the stage for a high-level meeting of the two institutions this weekend in Washington.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Doubling the stranglehold on 'poor lands.'
rootsie on 04.15.05 @ 08:43 AM CST [link]

Paris Hotel Fire Kills at Least 20 People

PARIS (AP) -- People screamed to be rescued from flames -- some even jumped from windows -- as a fire roared through a Paris hotel early Friday used by the government to house needy African families. At least 20 people were killed, half of them children, officials said.

More than 50 people were injured, 11 seriously. The fire was thought to have started in a first-floor breakfast room of the one-star Paris Opera hotel in the capital's 9th district, a popular tourist area, fire officials said.
Full Article: nytimes.com

I guess Africans only rate one-star i.e. firetraps.
rootsie on 04.15.05 @ 08:39 AM CST [link]

Viagra Cleared as Kosher for Passover

JERUSALEM, April 14 - A prominent Israeli rabbi has reversed an earlier ban and ruled that the anti-impotency drug Viagra can be made kosher for Passover, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.

The rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu, a former Sephardic chief rabbi, said Viagra could be taken if the pill was placed in special gelatin capsules before the weeklong observance begins April 23, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.15.05 @ 08:34 AM CST [link]
Wednesday, April 13th

"They Will Treat You Like Animals": The Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34

Either the administrators of New York City's Public School 34 aren't hip to semantics, or their most recent interpretation and application of the term "savage" is entirely incongruent to the discourse of White-patriarchal-privilege, and most specifically here, the hastening assault against the Haitian Global Community by a myriad selection of American society. For further elaboration, please see the following.

As a seasoned and rather proud cynic, there are few displays of barbarism that tweak the nerves, bring about a spat of fury, a vitriolic spasm, and what have you. Forget that last bit of deceit. In reality, all too often, I do succumb to the sexy red temptress of rage. The latest chapter of rancor and virulence proliferated by New York Public School 34's Assistant Principle Nancy Miller and Principle Pauline Shakespeare has my bowels in fits.

"While all my city is heavy I drop elephant shit
Smeared the face of the fascist priest's pulpit"
Zach De La Rocha

Yup.

New York's cultural cabal stays heavy, dropping fecal matter from the fuselage of pig despotism, late-night blackface, mayoral-Mussolinism and the like; Stuka war eagles razing the Black, Brown and Migrant communities like the Ho Chi Minh trail. For the Haitian Community, Operation Phoenix leapt through McNamara's porthole of kill-tha-gook and embedded itself within the psyche of city-commandants. Nou tout Viet Cong ­ We are all Viet Cong. Savages, in short.

Thirteen fourth grade students on public trial. The jury ­ PS34 populace. The courtroom ­ school cafeteria. The crime ­ being Haitian. In response to a classroom conflict involving two students, educational hack Nancy Miller, as white-cloaked-judge in de facto robe, sentenced the youths to public humiliation and ethnic degradation. As punishment for acting in the universal vein of childhood, she sat the children on the cafeteria floor before the student-jury, forced them to eat their lunch of rice and chicken with bare hands, subjecting them to a primary-educational-stoning, equipped with demeaning glances and ridicule per their peers. According to the "guilty" parties, Miller's articulation was as such: "In Haiti, they treat you like animals, and I will treat you the same way here." Yes Ms. Miller, in Haiti, they, Blancs yo (Whites / foreigners / outsiders, aka UN, U$, France, Canada, USAID, OAS, CIA, 184, Haitian Elite) do treat us as inferior peoples, acting as only savages can. We expect no less from you, you studious apprentice. Only through the lens of a dysfunctional clique of negrophobes could such a valiant people be "considered inferior." If time travel were possible, now would be an excellent time to send message to General Le Clerc and Napoleon Bonaparte. The query: How humiliating was the serving, guerilla style in 1804?

The plot thickens. Principle Pauline Shakespeare, a sister no less ­ pause for dramatic effect, a fucking sister ­ exemplified the role of house-hand, Sanbo, McWhorter, Watts, Powell, Condoskeeza, Cosby, Blackwell; attempted a cover up, in doing so, efforting to bribe the gesticulating "savages," rather "animals," with ice cream. Shit, you know tha ghetto's got sweet teeth. Miller and Shakespeare promoted the stereotype to the wrong community. In Haiti, we sharpen sugar cane stalks to pierce United Nations APV's.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.13.05 @ 08:54 PM CST [link]

Bolton in the Western Sahara

By Maria Carrion
With his controversial past statements on the United Nations now being used as munition against his candidacy to be the United States Ambassador at the UN, President George W. Bush's nominee John Bolton has an uphill battle in proving himself as anything but an enemy of the global body.

But at his raucous confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, Bolton pointed to his pro-bono work on a little-known area of the world as evidence that he respects the work of the UN: Africa's last colony, the Western Sahara. Bolton assisted former Secretary of State James Baker when his then-boss was appointed UN Special Envoy to the Western Sahara and given the task of organizing a referendum for self-determination in the territory, which has been occupied by Morocco for the past 30 years. For just a minute, Bolton put this tiny territory on the Senate's map.

Many of the Senators attending the hearings might have never heard of the Western Sahara, a stretch of land that lies between Morocco and Mauritania. In 1975, Morocco invaded the Western Sahara following the withdrawal of Spain, its former colonial ruler. The invasion had the support of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and was facilitated by Spain with the signing of an agreement that allowed Morocco and Mauritania to take possession of the land. Mauritania later withdrew.

The brutal military invasion was followed by a repopulation campaign known as the Green March, with hundreds of thousands of Moroccan citizens moving to the area with the promise of financial aid and a better life. At the same time, almost 200,000 Sahrawis, as the natives of the land are known, were forced into exile, settling in camps in Algeria, whose government has supported them financially and militarily. Others too frail to make the long trip by foot through the Sahara Desert stayed behind in the occupied lands, creating traumatic family separations that have lasted to this day. Thousands of others were killed, disappeared or jailed, while many young men and some women joined the newly-formed Polisario Front in a war against Morocco that lasted until 1991, and that produced thousands of deaths on both sides. With US aid, Morocco built a wall ­ more like an interminable sand trench lined with over a million landmines ­ stretching for over one thousand kilometers between the occupied lands and a small part of the Western Sahara controlled by the Polisario Front, known as the "liberated zone." Morocco refers to it as the "protective wall"; Sahrawis call it the "wall of shame."
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.13.05 @ 08:44 PM CST [link]

Don't be fooled by the spin on Iraq

Saddam Hussein's effigy was pulled down again in Baghdad's Firdos Square at the weekend. But unlike the made-for-TV event when US troops first entered the Iraqi capital, the toppling of Saddam on the occupation's second anniversary was different.

Instead of being done by US marines with a few dozen Iraqi bystanders, 300,000 Iraqis were on hand. They threw down effigies of Bush and Blair as well as the old dictator, at a rally that did not celebrate liberation but called for the immediate departure of foreign troops.

For most Iraqis, with the exception of the Kurds, Washington's "liberation" never was. Wounded national pride was greater than relief at Saddam's departure. Iraqis were soon angered by the failure to get power and water supplies repaired, the brutality of US army tactics, and the disappearance of their country's precious oil revenues into inadequately supervised accounts, or handed to foreigners under contracts that produced no benefits for Iraqis.

From last autumn's disastrous attack on Falluja to the huge increase in detention without trial, the casualties go on rising. After an amnesty last summer, the numbers of "security detainees" have gone up again and reached a record 17,000.

The weekend's vast protest shows that opposition is still growing, in spite of US and British government claims to have Iraqis' best interests at heart. It was the biggest demonstration since foreign troops invaded.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.13.05 @ 08:21 PM CST [link]

Rough ride for Bush nominee

The man chosen by George Bush to be the new US director of national intelligence yesterday denied that he had covered up human rights abuses when he was Washington's ambassador to Honduras.

John Negroponte came under fierce questioning from the Senate intelligence committee as his nomination for the role was considered.

The questioning coincided with the publication of diplomatic cables sent by Mr Negroponte in the 1980s which indicate that he secretly sought to undermine the peace process in central America and entertained the head of a group trying to violently overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The documents show that he sought to cover up clandestine US involvement in the war in Nicaragua.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.13.05 @ 08:16 PM CST [link]

Art Exhibit Featuring Bush Stamp Probed

CHICAGO - The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President Bush with a gun pointed at his head.

The exhibit, called "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin," opened last week at Columbia College in Chicago. It features stamps designed by 47 artists addressing issues such as the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal, racism and the war in Iraq.

None of the artists is tied to the college.

Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur would not say Tuesday whether the inquiry had been completed or whom the Secret Service had interviewed, but he said no artwork had been confiscated.

The investigation began after authorities received a call from a Chicago resident.

"We need to ensure, as best we can, that this is nothing more than artwork with a political statement," Mazur said.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Well what else would it be?
rootsie on 04.13.05 @ 08:12 PM CST [link]

Pacific 'Ring of Fire' awakened by Indonesian quakes

MOUNT TALANG, Indonesia (AFP) - Massive quakes in Indonesia have stirred two huge volcanoes from their slumber and sent shockwaves reverberating along a vast and volatile region known as the Pacific "Ring of Fire."

Both on land or underwater, the volatile edges of the north Pacific, bounded by the east Asian rim and the west coast of the Americas, are alive with near-constant seismic activity.

Some of the most dramatic natural disasters of recent history have happened within the Ring's arc, which stretches from Chile, north to Alaska and then west to encompass Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands.

From the nuclear-like explosion of Krakatoa volcano off Indonesia in 1883 to the eruption of Mount St Helens in the United States in 1980, the Ring's awesome power is legendary.

But it gained new notoriety when on December 26 last year, a massive 9.3 magnitude earthquake occurred off Indonesia unleashing tsunamis that devastated shores around the Indian Ocean, killing more than 220,000 people.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 04.13.05 @ 08:05 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, April 12th

Rushdie Says Bush Policies Help Islamic Terrorism

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration helps the cause of Islamic terrorism by failing to engage in serious dialogue with the international community, author Salman Rushdie said on Tuesday.

Rushdie -- infamous for living for years under threat of death after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 pronouncement that his novel "The Satanic Verses" was blasphemous -- said he believes U.S. isolationism has turned not just its enemies against America, but its allies too.

"What I think plays into Islamic terrorism is ... the curious ability of the current administration to unite people against it," Rushdie told Reuters in an interview.

Rushdie said he found it striking how the "colossal sympathy" the world felt for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been squandered so quickly.

"It seems really remarkable that the moment you leave America ... you find not just America's natural enemies, but America's natural allies talking in language more critical than I, in my life, have ever heard about the United States," he said.

The novelist, born in India and raised in Britain, attributed the shift in sentiment toward the United States to the Bush administration's "unilateralist policies" and its "unwillingness to engage with the rest of the world in a serious way."

"This go-it-alone attitude gets people's backs up," he said of President Bush's foreign policy.

LACK OF LISTENING
As president of the PEN American Center, a writers group, Rushdie helped organize an international literary festival this week in New York -- an event he hopes will help restore global dialogue.

"There seems to have been a breach in our ability to listen to each other," he said.

"It's really important at this particular moment in the history of the world that ordinary American people should get as broad a sense of how the world is thinking."

Such dialogue, he said, is "crucial, especially if at the political level there is a relative uninterest in maintaining that global dialogue."

The PEN World Voices festival, from April 16-22, is set to bring more than 100 international authors to New York to participate in more than 40 events, including readings and discussions on topics from politics and literature to erotica.

The event is the first international gathering organized by PEN since 1986, when Norman Mailer headed the group.

Rushdie, who wrote an op-ed in March syndicated by The New York Times calling for less religion in politics, took Bush to task on that issue too.

"It worries me more when religious discourse becomes the language of politics," he said. "I think it is happening a lot more here than it used to."

Rushdie said his latest novel, "Shalimar the Clown," will be published in September.

"I decided to murder an American ambassador," he said of its plot, in which a U.S. envoy to India is killed after he retires to America. "It seems to be a political murder, but actually it turns out to be completely personal."
reuters.myway.com
rootsie on 04.12.05 @ 10:07 PM CST [link]

Bearing Haile Selassie's Face, Commoner Claims His Blood

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Mekbeb Abebe Welde is the spitting image of Ethiopia's fallen emperor, Haile Selassie. Mr. Abebe has the same pointy chin, down-turned nose and slight build. When he picks up a cup of macchiato and puts it to his lips, as he did in a local cafe the other day, he does so ever so gracefully, more like a prince than a cabdriver.

But Mr. Abebe, 33, is a cabdriver. He lives a humble life in Ethiopia's crowded capital, scrounging to survive as so many others here do.

Still, Mr. Abebe's friends call him "Prince" and bow down when they see him, deference that stems from more than his resemblance to the emperor. Some here think Mr. Abebe really is a son born out of wedlock to the ruler, who claimed blood ties to the biblical King Solomon.

The monarchy was wiped out in this country in 1975, after the emperor died at age 83, but everyone knows the emperor's official kin. Mr. Abebe, on the other hand, exists in a netherworld, gossiped about, pointed at and subjected at times to angry diatribes about the emperor's misrule but not accepted by the emperor's acknowledged flesh and blood.

Mr. Abebe has petitioned the royal family to recognize him, to no avail. No one seems interested in his offer to undergo a DNA test.

Even if he were welcomed into the family, he would not necessarily win great treasure. The emperor's relatives live well, but most of their vast holdings were long ago seized by the state. He might enjoy prestige among devotees of the emperor, but he would have to suffer scorn from the emperor's many detractors. Mr. Abebe says it is acceptance by blood relations that motivates him, not treasure or acclaim.

Still, it would not be so bad to be able to travel the world, as the emperor's acknowledged relatives do. Mr. Abebe could perhaps go off to some "big name" university to get an education. He might get a big gated home to replace his modest dwelling. As the emperor's son, he could walk into the Sheraton Addis, where the cost of a glass of orange juice exceeds many Ethiopians' daily wage, and afford to quench his thirst.

It is family lore more than anything else that Mr. Abebe offers as evidence of his blood ties. His mother, Almaz Tadesse Goshu, was one of the emperor's many servants. They supposedly had a liaison late in the emperor's tenure, long after his wife had died.

Mr. Abebe says his mother's husband divorced her when he learned the child she was carrying was the emperor's. She died when Mekbeb was 7; he was taken in by a general who had been close to the emperor.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.12.05 @ 10:01 PM CST [link]

Man's Claims May Be a Look at Dark Side of War on Terror

ULM, GERMANY -- Khaled el-Masri says his strange and violent trip into the void began with a bus ride on New Year's Eve 2003.

When he returned to this city five months later, his friends didn't believe the odyssey he recounted. Masri said he was kidnapped in Macedonia, beaten by masked men, blindfolded, injected with drugs and flown to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and interrogated by U.S. intelligence agents. He said he was finally dumped in the mountains of Albania.

"One person told me not to tell this story because it's so unreal, no one would listen," said Masri, a German citizen who was born in Lebanon.

A Munich prosecutor has launched an investigation and is intent on questioning U.S. officials about the unemployed car salesman's claim that he was wrongly targeted as an Islamic militant. Masri's story, if true, would offer a rare firsthand look at one man's disappearance into a hidden dimension of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. authorities have used overseas detention centers and jails to hold or interrogate suspected terrorists, such as at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Many of the estimated 9,000 prisoners in U.S. military custody were captured in Iraq, but others, like Masri, were allegedly picked up in another country and delivered to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan or elsewhere for months of confinement.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on Masri's case, but White House, Justice Department and CIA officials have long argued that U.S. laws authorize such covert operations. They say U.S. officials have been given assurances in every case that no one is tortured.
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 04.12.05 @ 09:55 PM CST [link]

U.S.: Pay Gap Widens Between CEOs and Workers

WASHINGTON -- The chief executives of major U.S. corporations enjoyed double-digit pay raises last year, adding to a record of ''jaw-dropping'' compensation largely undisturbed by recent years' falling profits and share prices and a wave of scandals involving management chicanery, the country's leading labor federation said in a new survey.

Chief executive officers (CEOs) were being enriched at the expense of working families' retirement savings, the AFL-CIO said in its Executive Pay Watch study, released Monday as a Web site. The latest annual update aimed to rally support for labor and other investors who plan to force some 140 companies to confront pay issues at annual shareholders' meetings in coming months.

''We have seen a tremendous amount of interest among workers in holding CEOs and their boards accountable,'' said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the 13-million-member labor federation. ''They are rightfully outraged when they learn about jaw-dropping executive compensation packages. It's time to put the brakes on runaway CEO pay.''

An analysis of securities filings showed that CEO salaries rose 12 percent in 2004 compared with average raises of 3.6 percent for rank-and-file workers, further widening the world's largest gaps between executive and labor pay.
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 04.12.05 @ 09:51 PM CST [link]

Chinese village protest turns into riot of thousands

Reports that two elderly women were killed during a protest against factory pollution have sparked a bloody riot by thousands of villagers in eastern China.

Several dozen police officers were injured, five seriously, during the clashes in Huankantou village, Zhejiang province, on Sunday. It was the latest of several recent violent demonstrations, of a kind that poses an increasingly serious threat to China's stability.

The two protesters were said to have been killed when officials tried to disperse 200 elderly women who had kept a two-week vigil outside a chemical factory that they blamed for ruined crops and deformities in new-born babies.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.12.05 @ 09:47 PM CST [link]
Sunday, April 10th

US will block Brown campaign to beat poverty with gold sale

Gordon Brown's year-long anti-poverty crusade is in jeopardy this week, as the US prepares to block his plans for a sale of International Monetary Fund gold reserves to raise cash for debt relief.

Striking a deal to sell or revalue some of the IMF's $9 billion of gold reserves in Washington, at the spring gathering of the IMF and World Bank, was meant to be the first victory in Brown's campaign to increase spending on aid, and offer debt relief to the poorest countries. But the Treasury is playing down prospects for a deal, and it is thought Brown could even give Washington a miss this week, to concentrate on the election campaign.

'Clearly, the US is the blockage on this,' said Jonathan Glennie, senior policy adviser at Christian Aid. But he accused the Chancellor of overplaying the chance of a debt deal in February, after he chaired a fractious meeting of G7 finance ministers.

An IMF feasibility study, commissioned by G7 finance ministers, has given the thumbs-up to gold sales. But the US Treasury has been urged to oppose the idea by gold-mining firms who fear that a sell-off could depress global prices for the metal.

Henry Northover, policy analyst at Cafod, said the US preferred its own debt relief plans, under which poor countries' debts would be written off against aid flows. 'I think there is little appetite for the gold plan in the US. They feel they've done enough.'
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Somehow I feel this manuevering has nothing at all to do with 'aid.'
rootsie on 04.10.05 @ 11:38 AM CST [link]

Fire and rage in the shadow of Abu Ghraib

An orange sun set over the city, casting just enough light to finish the kickabout, when the players heard the unmistakable sound of rockets whooshing overhead.

Seconds later the missiles slammed into Abu Ghraib, the jail adjoining their football pitch. Explosions resounded across the complex and more rockets were launched. The Americans fired back.

The 25 children and seven adults sprinted to a wall enclosing the school grounds and huddled together, waiting for the storm to pass. But the attack intensified and bullets peppered closer so the group scrambled into a communal toilet. They cowered in darkness as hits on their shelter showered dust and masonry fragments. Some of the children started to sob, vomit and soil themselves.

'We put our hands in the children's mouths to stop them crying. It was the most difficult time of my life,' said Abu Mohammad, 38.

For 12 hours the group crouched in the three-square-metres space, murmuring prayers as car bombs detonated outside, until dawn broke and they emerged, waving a white T-shirt, to a scene of devastation.

Last Saturday's attack on Abu Ghraib drew worldwide headlines as one of the boldest insurgent operations in Iraq, which wounded 44 US troops and underlined the vulnerabilities of the occupation two years after the invasion.

Thousands of Shias loyal to the militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gathered in Baghdad yesterday, the anniversary of the city's fall and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, to demand an American withdrawal. It is a wish even closer to the heart of Arab Sunnis, who form the insurgency's backbone. The attack on Abu Ghraib, a symbolic target since last year's inmate abuse scandal, underlined a shift from hit-and-run ambushes to large-scale assaults.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.10.05 @ 11:34 AM CST [link]

S.African Party That Introduced Apartheid Disbands

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The South African party that introduced apartheid and enforced racial segregation for 50 years has voted itself out of existence after a series of stinging electoral defeats.

The federal council of the New National Party (NNP), renamed from the National Party in 1997, voted Saturday for a motion to disband the party by a margin of 88 in favor and two against. Three people abstained.

``The forerunner to the NNP, the National Party, brought development to a section of South Africa but also brought suffering through a system grounded on injustice,'' former leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a speech.

``No party... could hope to successfully atone and move ahead in the same vehicle,'' said van Schalkwyk, environmental affairs and tourism minister in President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet.

He addressed NNP members who joined the African National Congress (ANC) when the two parties merged last year.

But former president F.W. de Klerk said the NNP's demise undermined effective opposition to the ANC.

``The dissolution of the National Party creates a void in the party political scene in South Africa,'' he told the BBC.

``We need a fairly young person without any political baggage to stand up and be counted and say 'we are going to fill this void','' said de Klerk, who led talks to dismantle white rule and then turned his back on the NNP after last year's merger.
Full Article: nytimes.com

The corporate interests the NNP represented are certainly not going to go away. Maybe they figured they didn't need the party anymore.
rootsie on 04.10.05 @ 11:30 AM CST [link]

As Catholic as the Pope

DAKAR, Senegal — This week a cardinal from Nigeria, Francis Arinze, edged ahead of an Italian, Dionigi Tettamanzi, at Paddypower.com, an Irish wagering Web site taking bets on who will be the next pope, with 11-4 odds on the Nigerian and 7-2 on the Italian.

While Irish odds makers may not be the best guide to the intentions of the 117 Roman Catholic cardinals who will begin the ancient, mystical and extremely secret task of electing the next pope on April 18, they may be onto something.

Much has been made of the fact that two-thirds of Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere, and the church's traditional stronghold in Europe, which has produced more than a millennium of popes, is withering away at an alarming rate. These trends have led many to conclude that the next pope is likely to be from the developing world, most likely Latin America - as though the papacy were a tribal chieftaincy naturally shifting to the clan in ascendancy.

But that pointedly secular view misses a deeper spiritual argument for why the next pope might, and perhaps should, emerge from Africa. In some fundamental ways, the spirit of the Roman Catholic church in Africa is closest to the kind of Catholicism Pope John Paul II worked to engender across the globe.
Full Article: nytimes.com

I'm sure that was the plan...
rootsie on 04.10.05 @ 11:25 AM CST [link]

India and China Are Poised to Share Defining Moment

NEW DELHI, April 9 - Wen Jiabao, prime minister of China, began a four-day visit to India on Saturday just as the two countries - a third of humanity - are coming into their own at the same moment, with the potential for a dynamic shift in the world's politics and economy.

The impact on the global balance of power, the competition for resources and the health of the planet is causing many analysts and political leaders to sit up and take notice.

"Both countries have waited 3,000 years for this moment," said Gurcharan Das, the former chief executive of Procter & Gamble India and now an author.

Onetime rivals who went to war in 1962, India and China today find their economies growing at a remarkable clip. Both have a giant appetite for energy. Both are hungry for new markets. And both, it seems, are now gingerly testing the possibilities of doing business together.

It is not an accident that Mr. Wen began his visit not here in the capital but in Bangalore, the southern high-tech hub whose phenomenal rise China has eyed.

Trade is booming between them, especially as seen from the Indian side: after the United States, China is now its second largest trade partner, and it is growing by a giant 30 percent each year to an estimated $14 billion this year.

For the United States and the rest of the world, the effects of the sudden awakening of the Asian giants could be profound. In the years ahead, it may mean more downward pressure on wages, the outsourcing of more jobs, greater competition for investment and higher prices for scarce resources.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.10.05 @ 11:22 AM CST [link]

Black, Dead and Invisible

by Bob Herbert
I once had a young black girl, whose brother had been murdered, tell me she was too old to dream. She was 12.

I remember a teenager in South-Central Los Angeles a few years ago saying, in a discussion about his peers, "Some of us don't last too long."

Don't bother cueing the violins. This is an old story. There's no shock value and hardly any news value in yet another black or brown kid going down for the count. Burying the young has long since become routine in poor black and Latino neighborhoods. Nobody gets real excited about it. I find that peculiar, but there's a lot about the world that I find peculiar.
Full Article:commondreams.org
rootsie on 04.10.05 @ 11:18 AM CST [link]
Saturday, April 9th

US troops 'tried to smuggle cocaine'

Four US soldiers serving on anti-narcotics missions in Colombia are being held on charges of drug trafficking after the discovery of 35lb (15kg) of cocaine on a military aircraft.

The four, who have not been identified, were arrested at the end of March when their plane landed in Texas after taking off from southern Colombia. A fifth man was released.

Colombian authorities are investigating to see if other members of the US or Colombian military were involved.

William Wood, the US ambassador in Bogotá, said the four would not be extradited even if it was proved they had committed crimes on Colombian soil. He said a three-decade old agreement gave immunity to US soldiers serving in Colombia, but stressed: "We do not tolerate corruption."
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.09.05 @ 10:22 AM CST [link]

E.P.A. Halts Florida Test on Pesticides

WASHINGTON, April 8 - Stephen L. Johnson, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Friday that he was canceling a study of the effects of pesticides on infants and babies, a day after two Democratic senators said they would block his confirmation if the research continued.

Rich Hood, a spokesman for the agency, acknowledged that Mr. Johnson had canceled the test because of the objections to his confirmation. "They are pretty juxtaposed in time, aren't they?" Mr. Hood said. "There is clearly a connection."

But Mr. Hood said the opposition was not the only reason for the cancellation.

"Mr. Johnson said in a meeting this morning that, his confirmation aside, he had come to pose serious questions as to whether or not this study was the appropriate thing to do," he said.

A recruiting flier for the program, called the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3 months old or 9 to 12 months old, and "spraying pesticides inside your home routinely."

The study was being paid for in part by the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that includes pesticide makers.

In an interview on Friday, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, one of two Democrats who said they would block the confirmation, said the study amounted to "using infants in my state as guinea pigs."

Mr. Nelson said the study sought to recruit subjects in a poor neighborhood by offering parents compensation for practices potentially dangerous to their children.
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.09.05 @ 10:19 AM CST [link]

Made in China. Bought Everywhere.

HONG KONG, April 8 - After years of running large trade surpluses mainly with the United States, China is now exporting around the world at such a rapid rate that other countries find themselves racking up large bills to China as well. The resulting boom for China is certain to step up trade frictions elsewhere and increase pressure on Beijing to let its currency appreciate.

If the trend of the first two months continues, China would run a trade surplus with not only the United States but it would also turn its deficit with the rest of the world into a surplus. This could lead some of China's trading partners in Europe to join the United States in stronger demands for trade restrictions on China.
Full Article: nytimes.com

O I see. 'Free trade' is only desireable when the U.S. in the beneficiary.
rootsie on 04.09.05 @ 10:14 AM CST [link]

Where Chariots Raced, a Modern Spectacle Brings Together, if Briefly, a Diverse Church

ROME, April 8 - In the Circus Maximus, the dusty stadium nearly two miles from the Vatican where chariot races were held in pagan times, more than 10,000 people on Friday watched the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II on two giant screens, live from St. Peter's Basilica.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Circus Maximus. How apt.
rootsie on 04.09.05 @ 10:10 AM CST [link]
Friday, April 8th

Opus Dei and John Paul II: A Profoundly Rightwing Pope

by Vicente Navarro
The predominant perception of John Paul II, as extensively reproduced in most of the Western media, is that he was very conservative ("traditional" is the term widely used) in religious subjects but progressive in social matters, as evidenced by his defense of the poor and his concern for human and social rights. His key ideological role in the demise of the Soviet Union is put forward as further proof of his commitment to liberty and democracy. John Paul's support for the Polish trade union Solidarnosc, his numerous speeches in support of the poor and of those left behind by capitalism or globalization, and his frequent calls for human solidarity ­ not to mention his opposition to the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces ­ all are presented as examples of his progressiveness in the social arena.

In this perception of Pope John Paul II, some critical elements are forgotten. Let's detail them. He was groomed for the Papacy, long before he was elected Pope, by the ultra-right-wing sect Opus Dei. This secret organization was founded by Monsignor Escrivá, a Spanish priest who was formerly a private confessor to General Franco, organizing spiritual meetings for the Spanish fascist leadership. Opus Dei chose John Paul as the candidate for Pope very early in his career, when he was bishop of Krakow. His conservatism and anti-communism were very attractive to this sect.

John Paul traveled extensively at that time on trips organized and funded by Opus Dei, developing a very close working relationship with the sect. Opus Dei was the organization that developed the strategy to make him the Pope, assisted by the bishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger; the U.S. cardinals close to Opus Dei, Joseph Krol and Patrick Cody; and a cardinal then close to Opus Dei, Cardinal Franz König from Vienna (who later distanced himself from Opus Dei and from the Pope). The center of operations for this campaign was Villa Tevere, the Opus Dei headquarters in Rome.

Immediately after his election as Pope, John Paul designated Opus Dei as a special order directly accountable to him, not to the bishops. He surrounded himself with members of the order, the most visible being Navarro-Valls, an Opus Dei journalist who had worked for Abc, an ultra-conservative Spanish paper that had been supportive of the Franco regime. Navarro-Valls is well-known for selecting journalists to cover the Pope's international visits who would report on them favorably. He constantly vetoed critical voices, such as that of Domenico del Rio of the Italian paper La Repubblica.

The Pope later named another Opus Dei member, Angelo Sodano, as Secretary of State of the Vatican. Sodano had been the Vatican's ambassador in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, becoming a close friend and advisor to the dictator. He was responsible for the Pope's visit to the Pinochet dictatorship in 1987. During this visit, the Pope never called publicly for liberty or democracy in Chile. By contrast, when John Paul visited Cuba he was publicly critical of the Cuban regime. But he remained silent when he visited Pinochet. Later, when Pinochet was detained in London (awaiting extradition to Spain at the request of the Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon), the Vatican, under Sodano's influence, asked the British Government to let Pinochet return to Chile. This same Sodano had referred to liberation theologian Leonardo Boff ­ one of the most popular priests in Latin America ­ as "a traitor to the Church, the Judas of Christ." Under Pope John Paul II, the founder of Opus Dei was made a saint just twenty seven years after his death (one of the fastest such processes ever). Meanwhile, Pope John XXIII and Bishop Romero, assassinated in El Salvadore because of his support for the poor of that country, have been waiting in line for sainthood for a much longer time.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.08.05 @ 12:00 PM CST [link]
Thursday, April 7th

Trouble dogs house leader

Republican members of congress were forced to defend the house majority leader and Christian right stalwart Tom DeLay yesterday after damaging new allegations of financial misconduct.

The Texas Republican has already had three reprimands from the house ethics committee, and the latest allegation deepen speculation that his job as majority leader may be in jeopardy. Mr DeLay's associates are under investigation in his home state.

Yesterday the New York Times reported that Mr DeLay's wife and daughter had been paid more than $500,000 by his re-election campaign since 2001 for their work as organisers and fundraisers.

Meanwhile the Washington Post carried details of a 1997 trip to Moscow by Mr DeLay paid for by a Bahamian firm engaged in lobbying for Russian business interests.

Mr DeLay is barred by congressional ethics rules from accepting paid travel from lobbyists or foreigners.

It is the third of his trips to fall under scrutiny. Last month it was reported that he had a $70,000 visit to London and Scotland paid for by a native American tribe and gambling interests, and a $106,921 trip to South Korea in 2001 financed by Korean business.

"Each time he says he doesn't know who was behind it, and that is just not credible at this point," said Larry Noble, director of the Centre for Responsive Politics.

"There is a continuous political fallout from his ethics issues, and while he has been good at getting Republican troops to rally around him there comes a point at which they begin to see him as a liability, and begin to move away."
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 09:12 PM CST [link]

Move Against Mexico City Mayor Sets Off Protests

MEXICO CITY, April 7 - With the fate of the Mexican presidency at stake, hundreds of thousands of people thronged this city's central plaza today to support the leftist Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who faced a vote in Congress that could force him off the ballots in next year's national elections.

The lower chamber of deputies today was scheduled to approve a measure that would strip Mayor López of his official immunity so that he could stand trial in a minor land dispute. And since the Mexican Constitution holds suspects guilty until proven innocent, Mr. López would be banned from politics until the end of the trial.

In addressing the immense crowd today, the 51-year-old Mr. López called the proceedings against him a "farce" staged from the offices of Vicente Fox, Mexico's first opposition president. He charged that the attempt to knock him out of the race for president would undermine country's fragile democracy, moving Mexico back into a past when the political elite ruled like monarchs.

"The move to prosecute me," he said, "returns Mexico to authoritarian times when Los Pinos decided who would or would not become president." Los Pinos is Mexico's presidential mansion.

Mr. López added that President Fox's National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran this country for seven consecutive decades, had forged an unlikely alliance to cripple his left-wing movement and maintain the status quo.

"Whichever of them wins, things remain the same," he said. "They maintain a corrupt and privileged regime, and will continue devouring the country."
Full Article: nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 09:08 PM CST [link]

A Kurd Is Named Iraq's President as Tensions Boil

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 6 - A Kurdish militia leader who fought Saddam Hussein for decades was named president on Wednesday by Iraq's national assembly as Mr. Hussein watched the proceedings on a television inside his prison.

The militia leader, Jalal Talabani, will be the first Kurd to serve as president of an Arab-dominated country. But immediately after his appointment, tensions among Iraq's political groups erupted, as some Shiite and Kurdish members of the assembly demanded that the interim government resign as soon as Mr. Talabani, 72, is sworn in on Thursday.

That government, led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, has infuriated many officials from the main Shiite and Kurdish parties, which will dominate the new administration. They accuse Dr. Allawi, a secular Shiite, of having brought back into the government former senior members of the Baath Party who played key roles in oppressing ordinary Iraqis, especially Shiites and Kurds.
Full Article:nytimes.com
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 09:04 PM CST [link]

Activist hit by pie at Butler lecture

A conservative activist who criticizes what he calls the leftist domination of college campuses was struck with a pie Wednesday night at Butler University.

David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, had just started a lecture at Butler when he was hit.

Horowitz's supporters followed the assailants out of the hall, and confronted them with what a witness called "pushing and shoving." However, the attackers got away.

"There's a wave of violence on college campuses, committed by what I'd call fascists opposing conservatives," Horowitz said. "It's one step from that to injury."
After the incident, Horowitz completed his lecture.

It was the second time in a week that a conservative lecturer was hit by a pie at an Indiana university. On March 30, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, was attacked during a speech at Earlham College in Richmond.

Butler spokesman Marc Allan called Wednesday's incident "deplorable."
Full Article: indystar.com

I hear the lemon meringue is deadly.
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 08:59 PM CST [link]

Counsel to GOP Senator Wrote Memo On Schiavo

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.
Full Article:news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 08:54 PM CST [link]

I'm with Wolfowitz

Liberal handwringing over the World Bank simply reflects a failure to recognise the role it exists to fulfill.

by George Monbiot
It's about as close to consensus as the left is ever likely to come. Everyone this side of Atilla the Hun and the Wall Street Journal agrees that Paul Wolfowitz's appointment as president of the World Bank is a catastrophe. Except me.

Under Wolfowitz, my fellow progressives lament, the World Bank will work for America. If only someone else were chosen, it would work for the world's poor. Joseph Stiglitz, the bank's renegade former chief economist, champions Ernesto Zedillo, a former president of Mexico. A Guardian leading article suggested Colin Powell or, had he been allowed to stand, Bono. But what all this hand-wringing reveals is a profound misconception about the role and purpose of the body Wolfowitz will run.

The World Bank and the IMF were conceived by the US economist Harry Dexter White. Appointed by the US Treasury to lead the negotiations on postwar economic reconstruction, White spent most of 1943 banging the heads of the other allied nations together. They were appalled by his proposals. He insisted that his institutions would place the burden of stabilising the world economy on the countries suffering from debt and trade deficits rather than on the creditors. He insisted that "the more money you put in, the more votes you have". He decided, before the meeting at Bretton Woods in 1944, that "the US should have enough votes to block any decision".

Both the undemocratic voting arrangement and the US veto remain to this day. The result is that a body that works mostly in poor countries is controlled by rich ones. White demanded that national debts be redeemable for gold, that gold be convertible into dollars, and that exchange rates be fixed against the dollar. The result was to lay the ground for what was to become the dollar's global hegemony. White also decided that the IMF and the bank would be sited in Washington.

At the time, no one doubted that these bodies were designed as instruments of US economic policy, but all this has been airbrushed from history. Even the admirable Stiglitz believes the bank was the brainchild of the British economist John Maynard Keynes (he was, in fact, its most prominent opponent). When Noreena Hertz wrote on these pages last month that "the Bush administration is a very long way from the bank's espoused goals and mandate", she couldn't have been more wrong.

From the perspective of the world's poor, there has never been a good president of the World Bank. In seeking contrasts with Wolfowitz, it has become fashionable to look back to the reign of that other Pentagon hawk, Robert McNamara. He is supposed to have become, in the words of an Observer leader, "one of the most admired and effective of World Bank presidents". Admired in Washington, perhaps. McNamara was the man who concentrated almost all the bank's lending on vast prestige schemes (highways, ports, dams) while freezing out less glamorous causes such as health, education and sanitation. Most of the major projects he backed have, in economic or social terms or both, failed catastrophically.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 08:47 PM CST [link]

Vatican Gives Cardinal Law Role of Honor

VATICAN CITY - Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston over his role in the clergy sex abuse crisis, has been given a role of honor in the mourning for Pope John Paul II.

The Vatican announced Thursday he will lead one of the daily Masses celebrated in the pope's memory during the nine-day period that follows the funeral, called Novemdiales. The service will be held Monday at Rome's St. Mary Major Basilica, where Law was appointed archpriest after leaving Boston.

Some Roman Catholics in his former archdiocese immediately protested.

Suzanne Morse, spokeswoman for Voice of the Faithful, a Massachusetts-based reform group that emerged from the scandal, said Law's visibility since the pope's death has been "extremely painful" both for abuse survivors and rank-and-file Catholics.

"It certainly shows and puts a spotlight on the lack of accountability in the Catholic Church, that the most visible bishop in the clergy sexual abuse crisis has been given these honorary opportunities," she said.
Full Article: yahoo.com.news
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 08:41 PM CST [link]

Texas oilman seeks gusher from God in Israel

KIBBUTZ MAANIT, Israel - A Texas oilman is using his Bible as a guide to finding oil in the Holy Land.

John Brown, a born-again Christian and founder of Zion Oil & Gas of Dallas, can quote chapter and verse about his latest drilling venture in Israel, where his company has an oil and gas exploration license covering 96,000 acres.

“Most blessed of sons be Asher. Let him be favored by his brothers and let him dip his foot in oil,” Brown quotes from Moses’s blessing to one of the 12 Tribes of Israel in Deuteronomy 33:24.

Standing next to a 177-foot derrick at Kibbutz Maanit in northern Israel, Brown said the passage indicated there is oil lying beneath the biblical territory of the Tribe of Asher, where the agricultural community is located.

Geological surveys and an attempt by an Israeli-based company to find oil at the same site 10 years ago, a venture he said was abandoned for lack of funds, led Brown to pick the spot where new drilling will begin this week.

Brown said he raised money for “Project Joseph” from fellow evangelical Christians in the United States.

“From the investment standpoint, they certainly hope to have a return of the money,” he said. “But the basis of it is Genesis, chapter 12.”

In that passage, God promises to shower blessings on those who bless the “great nation” sired by the Hebrew patriarch Abraham.
msnbc.msn.com
rootsie on 04.07.05 @ 01:16 PM CST [link]
Wednesday, April 6th

"My God - they killed him!"

The streets are filled with vipers who've lost all ray of hope
You know it ain't even safe no more in the palace of the Pope
- Bob Dylan

by Jeff Wells
Is everything a conspiracy? No. Just the important stuff.

Since there's a lot of speculation these days about who will succeed Pope John Paul II, it seems a good time to recall the circumstances of the last papal succession. Because Luciani Albini, Pope John Paul I, was almost certainly murdered, by an international network of fascists and money launderers, with ties to far-right elements within military and intelligence agencies. (And isn't it just amazing, how often we find that convergence?)

He only served 33 days; what could he have done in that short time to deserve death? What kind of Pope was he becoming?

To the second question, there's the suggestion of an answer in this passage from David Yallop's In God's Name:

On August 28, the beginning of his papal revolution was announced. It took the form of a Vatican statement that there was to be no coronation, that the new pope refused to be crowned. There would be no sedia gestatoria, the chair used to carry the pope, no tiara encrusted with emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. No ostrich feathers, no six-hour ceremony.... Luciani, who never once used the royal "we," was determined that the royal papacy with its appurtenances of worldly grandeur should be replaced by a Church that resembled the concepts of its founder. The "coronation" became a simple Mass. The spectacle of a pontiff carried in a chair...was supplanted by the sight of a supreme pastor quietly walking up the steps of the altar. With that gesture Luciani abolished a thousand years of history.... The era of the poor Church had officially begun.

That right there would have been enough to make the Vatican's power elite nervous, but surely not enough to seek the Pope's death. Not even his expressed interest in reconsidering the Church's position on birth control would have been enough for that. What was enough, was his intent to overturn the tables of the corrupt Vatican Bank, and purge the Vatican of the P2 Lodge.

This is one of those things that make being a "conspiracy theorist" seem entirely superfluous. Just try imagining P2: an elite, ultra-secretive, neo-fascist, Masonic cabal, involved in money laundering, assassination and false-flag terrorism. (The "Strategy of Tension," to discredit Italy's Communist Party. For instance, the engineering of Aldo Moro's kidnapping and murder, and the Bologna train bombing.) P2 counted among its members the future Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, and reputedly boasted honourary members like Henry Kissinger, George HW Bush and arch-neocon, Michael Ledeen.

I mentioned P2 last August, with regard to Ledeen's long history with the Italian far right and the linchpin of Italian military intelligence to the Niger "Yellow Cake" forgery. [For more on the significance of P2 to US intelligence and the "Octopus," refer to David Guyatt's excellent articles "Operation Gladio", "Holy Smoke and Mirrors" and "The Money Fountain."]

Licio Gelli was P2's Grandmaster, and can't even be called a neo-fascist. He was Old School: a member of the Italian Black Shirt Brigade which fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, he spied on partisans in his native Italy for the Nazis, and obtained the SS rank of Oberleutenant. This same Gelli was a honoured guest of George HW Bush after the 1980 inauguration, and there is evidence that Gelli and P2 played a role in the October Surprise; even that Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered on Gelli's orders because he'd refused to provide Swedish cover for the covert transfer of money and arms. In her October Surprise, Barbara Honegger writes that a P2 informant claimed to her that before Palme's death, Gelli sent a message to former Republican National Committee advisor (and also alleged "honourary" P2 member) Philip Guarino, assuring him that "the Swedish tree will be felled," and to "tell our good friend Bush."

Your head exploding yet? There's more. GHW Bush's reputed code name for October Surprise was "The White Rose," which was also the name of a far-right Cuban exile group with which the CIA's Bush was reportedly engaged during the ramp-up to the Bay of Pigs. Honneger reports that when Italian police uncovered the P2 control cell responsible for terrorism in Italy, they learned that its code name was "The Rose of Twenty." Gelli seems to have had a weakness for the flower.

And this may mean nothing, or I know what you did: in 1988, on the 25th anniversary of John F Kennedy's murder, Ted Kennedy marked the occasion in Runnymede England by placing, at the foot of his brother's memorial, a single white rose.
Full Article: rigorousintuition.blogspot.com

A Balanced View Of Popes - Part 1
...Karol Wojtyla was a sort of chief assistant to the Bishop of Krakow, who being pro-Nazi, controlled fellow Poles with an iron fist and kept them submissive and docile for the benefit of the German occupation forces. Later, far too many Poles claimed they knew nothing of the round-up of the Jews from the ghettoes and transporting them to concentration camp for slave labor for I.G. Farben.
 
Millions of Jews, labor leaders, and other "enemies of the State" were worked to death while being starved. Elderly and disabled Jews were quickly disposed of; they were of no use in the Nazi war factories.
 
Most Poles later either denied knowing of this when it was happening or claimed they did not participate in the crimes against humanity. Presumably, Wojtyla took the same position as his fellow Poles. In his later career, did anyone in the Monopoly Press ever dare ask him?
 
Then there is the story of another one. In 1978, in their secret Conclave, the Cardinals selected another Italian to be Pope, John Paul 1st. But, soon it became evident from a geopolitical and religious standpoint, they most likely made a wrong selection.
 
He soon enough let it be known that he was for modifying the Vatican position of absolute prohibition for Catholics to use birth control. In simple terms, he was against birthing more children than a couple could financially take care of. It was a reasonable , humane position to non-Catholics.
 
Furthermore, he was determined to put an end to the traditional Sicilian and Italian Mafia, jointly with
certain corrupt Archbishops, and the American CIA, in using the Vatican Bank as a money laundry for stolen gold treasuries, dope money, illlcit weapons deals, assassination funds, and superior counterfeit currency dealings, among other dirty, bloody business.
 
Some Italian editors dared demand that Pope John Paul 1st, do something about the Continental Bank of Chicago, the majority owners jointly being the Vatican and the Queen of England. The bank, some Italian editors stated, was a laundry for the Mafia.
Full Article: rense.com
rootsie on 04.06.05 @ 09:10 PM CST [link]

:COINTELPRO's long shadowThe importance of the John Graham case

...John Graham, a Canadian citizen and former AIM activist, has been charged in a U.S. court with the 1975 murder of Anna Mae Aquash, a member of the Mi’kmaq First Nation who was a prominent young leader of AIM.

An editorial piece such as this can’t do justice to the complexities of this case, nor to the sordid history of U.S. government sabotage of the American Indian Movement. Rex Wyler, a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist, has written extensively on the Graham case, and his in-depth article – published in the CanWest Global Vancouver Sun of all places – provides a fairly definitive summary. (See 'Who Killed Anna Mae?' January 4, 2004).

Suffice to say, though, that the evidence against Graham is highly dubious, and must be viewed in light of the 1976 Peltier extradition, where it is now acknowledged that the FBI falsified evidence. Further, the entire context of the case is the U.S. government’s efforts to exterminate oppositional Native movements, as a culmination of a centuries-long genocide and colonisation.

The COINTELPRO infiltration by government agents -- also now well documented -- was designed to create and fuel violent internecine conflicts within AIM as well as other organized threats to ‘Homeland Security’ such as the Black Panther Party, the Socialist Workers Party and a myriad of other groups organizing for social change.

A number of journalists, commentators, and Native activists have articulated a principled position on the case: No matter who pulled the trigger, the FBI is responsible for the murder of Anna Mae.
Full Article: zmag.org
rootsie on 04.06.05 @ 08:58 PM CST [link]

Drugs, Bases, and JailsThe Bush administration's Afghan Spring   

...So Afghanistan has once again become the land that time forgot. Given the present Bush democracy blitz and given the country's "success" -- a "struggling" or "nascent" democracy or "semi-democracy," liberated from one of the worst regimes on Earth and helped back onto its feet by 17,000-plus American troops stationed on its territory, it seems a case worth revisiting. What follows is the best assessment I can offer -- from this distance -- based at least to some extent on more fulsome reporting done for media outlets outside the United States.

When you begin to look around, you quickly find that just about everyone -- Bush proponents and critics alike -- seems to agree on at least some of the following when it comes to the experiment in "democracy" in Afghanistan: The country now qualifies, according to the Human Development Index in the UN's Human Development Report 2004, as the sixth worst off country on Earth, perched just above five absolute basket-case nations (Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone) in sub-Saharan Africa. The power of the new, democratically elected government of Hamid Karzai extends only weakly beyond the outskirts of Kabul. Large swathes of Afghanistan are still ruled by warlords and drug lords, or in some cases undoubtedly warlord/drug lords; and while the Taliban was largely swept away, armed militias dominate much of the country as they did after the Soviet withdrawal back in 1989. In addition, a low-level guerrilla war is still being run by elements of the former Taliban regime for which, in areas of the South, there is a growing "nostalgia."

Women, outside a few cities, seem hardly better off than they were under the Taliban. As Sonali Kolhatkar, co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!:

"We hear... about [how] five million girls are now going to school. It is wonderful. When I was in Afghanistan, I noticed that in Kabul, certainly schools were open, women were walking around fairly openly with not as much fear. Outside of Kabul, where 80% of Afghans reside, totally different situation. There are no schools. I visited the Farah province, which is a very isolated, remote province in western Afghanistan and there were no schools except for the one school that Afghan Women's Mission is funding that is administered by our allies, the members of RAWA. Aside from that one school for girls, there are no schools in the region. And so we hear all of these very superficial things about how great Afghan women are, you know, the progress they're making. The U.N. just released a report recently on Afghanistan where they described Afghanistan's education system as, quote, 'the worst in the world.' And, you know, we never hear that. Our media, when they covered Laura Bush's trip, will not mention, will not do their homework, and will not mention these facts."
Full Article: zmag.org
rootsie on 04.06.05 @ 08:55 PM CST [link]

Author of Yucca Mtn. E-Mails Rehired

WASHINGTON (AP) - A government scientist at the center of a controversy over falsifying documents on the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump project received another Energy Department contract for more work on the project as the problems came to light.

The worker was asked to help run computer models of how water moved through the proposed waste dump site in Nevada - the same kind of work he was doing when he wrote e-mails about falsifying documents, deleting data and keeping two sets of records, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.

The USGS, where the scientist works as a research hydrologist, disclosed the new DOE contract a day after USGS Director Charles Groat assured a congressional committee that the workers who wrote and received e-mails about fudging data were no longer working on the waste dump project.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.06.05 @ 08:50 PM CST [link]

Old Foe of U.S. Trying for a Comeback in Nicaragua

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - It has been more than two decades since this tiny nation of five million people and its revolutionary strongman, Daniel Ortega, kept Washington awake at night. In recent months, new fears, but the same old politics, have revived that tossing and turning.

Mr. Ortega, one of United States' fiercest opponents during the cold war and the entrenched leader of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, has opened his fourth campaign for the presidency. Washington is worried once again that its old nemesis might win, this time with consequences for a new global war, on terrorism.

Even though the elections here are more than a year and a half away, and even though Mr. Ortega's chances seem slim, the Bush administration is taking no chances and has begun concerted efforts to stop him.

The clearest shot across the bow came in March when the United States suspended some $2.3 million in military aid to Nicaragua to put pressure on the government, and an army with roots in the Sandinista movement, to destroy its arsenal of Soviet-made SA-7 missiles.

But pressure had been building since January, when a sting operation by the United States and Nicaraguan authorities netted two Nicaraguan men trying to sell an SA-7, a shoulder-fired missile that terrorism experts consider a threat to civilian aircraft.

The sting set off alarms among conservative Republicans, and the State Department sent two high-level delegations here to Managua.

In political magazines and Congressional testimony in Washington, cold war alums - almost as masterly at political resurrection as Mr. Ortega - issued strong, although vaguely substantiated warnings about Al Qaeda recruiting operatives in Latin America; about a new "axis of evil" forming across the Western Hemisphere, from Venezuela through Nicaragua to Cuba; about a "destabilization," or a "backslide away from democratic principles" south of the border; about Daniel Ortega serving as a tool to Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
Full Article: nytimes.com

So wrong. On so many levels. Now anyone advocating democracy south of the border is a 'terrorist.' How do you get credentialed as a terrorism expert? Seems like a good gig.
rootsie on 04.06.05 @ 08:47 PM CST [link]

Florida eyes allowing residents to open fire whenever they see threat

MIAMI (AFP) - Florida's legislature has approved a bill that would give residents the right to open fire against anyone they perceive as a threat in public, instead of having to try to avoid a conflict as under prevailing law.

Outraged opponents say the law will encourage Floridians to open fire first and ask questions later, fostering a sort of statewide Wild West shootout mentality. Supporters argue that criminals will think twice if they believe they are likely to be promptly shot when they assault someone.

Republican Governor Jeb Bush, who has said he plans to sign the bill, says it is "a good, commonsense, anti-crime issue."
Full Article: news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 04.06.05 @ 08:37 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, April 5th

Boost for superstitious: Sun to darken on day of pope's funeral

PARIS (AFP) - Those who say eclipses herald history-shaping events will find support for their superstition when, on Friday, the Sun will be briefly plunged into darkness on the day of Pope John Paul II's funeral.

Astronomers, though, say the eclipse, while of a rare and intriguing type, was calculated long ago and is simply part of a ballet in celestial physics between the Sun, Earth and Moon.

It will be visible on Friday along an arc ranging from the southwestern Pacific to South America, at a time it will already be night in Rome.

The event will be a rare type called a "hybrid eclipse," expert Fred Espenak says on his website
news.yahoo.com

Yeah yeah and the sky darkened the day Jesus died--we get it. It's this kind of junk that gives a girl paranoid thoughts, such as "ok they timed his death announcement to coincide with an eclipse."

Somebody young but who should still know better said to me "it seems like the Pope was a pretty good guy." This extravaganza is all too reminiscent of the Reagan funeral. The media's going in for Roman pagaentry, and it all feels most sinister to me.

People forget that the first John Paul, a proponent of cleaning up Vatican corruption and reforming Church doctrine on birth control, had a 'heart attack' 33 days into his reign in the midst of a Masonic government scandal in Italy (P-2 Lodge) which was associated with the bankruptcy of Continental of Illinois while Chicago Archbishop Marcinkus was the head of the Vatican bank(which was laundering counterfeit Mafia bonds), the'suicide' of Roberto Calvi, yada yada yada...The Vatican Bank's billions have been most useful to the international fascist network that has been running full-tilt since WWII,
turning Latin America into one big torture chamber, and involved up to its eyeballs in guns and drugs and black-ops, all this in the name of opposing Communism.

John Paul II effectively buried Church reform. His policies relentlessly attacked women, and he did Africa the big favor of opposing the use of condoms. He took apart Liberation Theology in Latin America, and was staunchly pro-Zionist. His non-response to the various sex scandals was shameful.

Some legacy. Some hero. Some 'saint.'


rootsie on 04.05.05 @ 11:07 PM CST [link]
Sunday, April 3rd

Fury at 'shoot for fun' memo

One of the biggest private security firms in Iraq has created outrage after a memo to staff claimed it is 'fun' to shoot people.

Emails seen by The Observer reveal that employees of Blackwater Security were recently sent a message stating that 'actually it is "fun" to shoot some people.'

Dated 7 March and bearing the name of Blackwater's president, Gary Jackson, the electronic newsletter adds that terrorists 'need to get creamed, and it's fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such folk.'
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.03.05 @ 09:33 AM CST [link]

Zimbabwe's Neighbors Endorse Disputed Vote

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Neighboring countries supportive of President Robert Mugabe's increasingly isolated regime on Sunday endorsed his party's sweeping election victory in Zimbabwe, despite widespread allegations the poll was rigged.

Mugabe said he hoped to stay in power until he was 100, as he celebrated Saturday the overwhelming win that secures his nearly 25-year rule and gives his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front the power to change the constitution.

Observers from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community congratulated Zimbabwe on ``peaceful, transparent, credible and well managed elections, which reflect the will of the people.''

They said problems with voters' being unable to cast ballots affected all parties and did not influence the outcome.

The regional bloc - which also endorsed a 2002 presidential poll widely condemned for violence, intimidation and vote rigging - urged the government to improve voter education and increase access by all parties to state-run media. Similar approval came from a South African delegation.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change rejected Thursday's election results as tainted by years of violence and intimidation - a view shared by the United States, Britain and independent rights groups. The party said discrepancies in the results pointed to ballot stuffing.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Doesn't sound 'increasingly isolated to me. There is certainly no particular reason to believe the U.S. and Britain, architects of Iraq's glorious election, about the fairness of this one.
rootsie on 04.03.05 @ 09:30 AM CST [link]

Death, Depression and Prozac

by Alexander Cockburn
Jeff Weise, teen slayer of ten, including himself, at the Red Lake Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, was on Prozac, prescribed by some doc. How did the consultation go? "Here Jeff, take these, they may help you get over life's little problems, like the fact that when you were 8 your dad committed suicide and when you were 10 your cousin was killed in a car wreck that left your mom with partial paralysis and an injured brain. And let's face it, Jeff, most likely you'll never get off the res. You're here for the rest of your life." Cut to a shot of the doc holding up a Prozac bottle, like the kindly fellow in the white coat and mirrored headband in 1950s Lucky Strike ads, telling us that Luckies were a fine way to soothe a raspy throat.

The minute the high command at Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, saw those news stories about Weise you can bet they went into crisis mode, and only began to relax when Weise's websurfs of neo-Nazi sites took over the headlines. Hitler trumps Prozac every time, particularly if it's an Injun teen ranting about racial purity. How many times, amid the carnage of such homicidal sprees, do investigators find a prescription for antidepressants at the murder scene? Luvox at Columbine, Prozac at Louisville, Kentucky, where Joseph Wesbecker killed nine, including himself. You'll find many such stories in the past fifteen years.

By now the Lilly defense formula is pretty standardized:self-righteous handouts about the company's costly research and rigorous screening, crowned by the imprimatur of that watchdog for the public interest, the FDA. And of course there's the bogus comfort of numbers; if Lilly's pill factory had a big sign like MacDonald's, it could boast Prozac: Billions Served.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 04.03.05 @ 09:25 AM CST [link]
Saturday, April 2nd

The Pope Is Dead: Why You Should Care

The death of John Paul II on Saturday afternoon, at the age of 84, may bring a collective shrug of secular shoulders. Folks who were already sick of hearing the daily medical report on the old man in the silly hat won't pay much heed to the glowing obituaries or lavish funeral rites. It's a Catholic thing; the rest of us wouldn't understand.

But despite all the God talk that will ensue over the next few days, John Paul's relevance extended well beyond the walls of the Vatican or the sacristy of St. Whatshisname down the block. Whether or not you accept the idea that John Paul was a spiritual leader with an infallible ability to interpret the teachings of Jesus Christ, there is no denying that he was as much a political figure as a religious one.

And an influential one, too. His voice on matters like the Iraq war, which he condemned, or communist rule in Eastern Europe carried a lot of weight: If an Italian newspaper account on recently opened files of the East German Stasi is to be believed, John Paul's opposition to Soviet rule was so powerful that the KGB plotted to kill him in 1981.

At .2 square miles, it's the world's smallest country, but the Vatican certainly punched above its weight during John Paul's papacy. At U.N. meetings in the 1990s on population policy, the Vatican opposed language that acknowledged a universal right to abortion or that suggested condoms might be used to stop the spread of AIDS. The rest of the world listened to those complaints. On a lot of them, the Vatican won.

And John Paul never shied from making direct calls to Roman Catholic politicians, as he did in July 2003, when he asked them to block or repeal laws permitting gay marriage. The Vatican's views on stem cell research are part of that debate as well.

Some of this clout might die with John Paul. But his particular interpretation of Catholic doctrine is unlikely to perish, because he has stacked the college of cardinals with his ideological allies. According to the BBC, he was still making appointments of bishops as late as Thursday.

All the obits of JP II are going to mention that he was the beloved leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics. Keep in mind that Americans make up only 6 percent of that total. The heart of the church is elsewhere, and its growth is in Asia and Africa. We can shrug our shoulders all we want at the next pope and the late one. But someone is listening.
Full Article: villagevoice.com
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 04:46 PM CST [link]

Papal candidate gives pro-Zionist talk

A cardinal considered a candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II delivered a strong message in favor of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land on Wednesday night, rejecting the claim that European Christians' support for the State of Israel is based on Holocaust guilt and saying that all Christians should affirm Zionism as a biblical imperative for the Jewish people.

Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, part of a visiting Austrian delegation, made the remarks in an address at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the topic of "God's chosen land."

After asking, "What does Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] mean to us," Schoenborn answered by stressing the doctrinal importance to Christians of not only recognizing Jews' connection to the land, but also ensuring that Christian identification with the Jewish Bible not lead to a "usurpation" of Jewish uniqueness.

"Only once in human history did God take a country as an inheritance and give it to His chosen people," Schoenborn said, adding that Pope John Paul II had himself declared the biblical commandment for Jews to live in Israel an everlasting covenant that remained valid today. Christians, Schoenborn said, should rejoice in the return of Jews to the Holy Land as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

A Palestinian priest challenged the cardinal on that point, asking how he could preach to his Palestinian congregation that the establishment of the modern Jewish state was not a "catastrophe," as they called it, or the result of European powers' guilty conscience following World War II.

Schoenborn responded by saying that "I am myself a refugee" – at the end of World War II, when he was an infant, Schoenborn's parents fled to Austria from Czechoslovakia – and that he felt pained at the unrecognized injustice that thousands of Czechs had suffered. However, he said, both that case and the Arab-Israeli conflict were matters of international law, whereas the chosenness of the Jewish people and their inheritance in the Holy Land were matters of faith that date back to the Bible itself.

Schoenborn also said he hoped the conflict here would be resolved in accordance with international law, and with respect to justice for the Palestinian people. "We are all longing for that solution," he said. "Yet I am not naive. Conflicts are part of [both sides'] love of the land, and always have been... There is no simple solution."
jpost.com

Sounds like Pope material to me. Some of us think that events of the past weeks a la Popes and Shiavos and feeding tubes are being used to maniopulate the emotions of 'true believers'in the direction of 'holy war.'
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 11:01 AM CST [link]

Why American neocons are out for Kofi Annan's blood

...There is a breathtaking hypocrisy to the indictment of Kofi Annan over the oil for food programme for Iraq. It was the US and the UK who devised the programme, piloted the UN resolutions that gave it authority, sat on the committee to administer it and ran the blockade to enforce it. I know because I spent a high proportion of my time at the Foreign Office trying to make a success of it. If there were problems with it then Washington and London should be in the dock alongside the luckless Kofi Annan, who happened to be general secretary at the time.

But there is a deeper level of perversity to the denigration of Annan by the American right wing. They have long clamoured for reform of the UN. Kofi Annan has just proposed the most comprehensive overhaul of the UN in its history and is the general secretary most likely to deliver support for it. If they persist in undermining him they are likely to derail his reform package. The suspicion must be that they would rather have a creaking, ineffective UN to treat as a coconut shy than a modern, representative forum that would oblige them to respect collective decisions.

The eccentric selection of John Bolton as Bush's ambassador to the UN is consistent with such a strategy of sabotage rather than reform. His hostility to any constraint on US unilateralism is so deep, (and his life so sad), that he described his "happiest moment" signing the letter to Kofi Annan telling him that the US would have nothing to do with the international criminal court. His relish in the gesture is all the more revealing as the issue was not within the remit of his job, and he pleaded to be allowed to sign as a special favour.

Ironically the first confrontation the US has faced since his appointment was the vote last night on the proposal to refer the war crimes in Darfur to the international criminal court. The problem for Washington unilateralists in trying to stop it was that the brutality and genocide in Darfur is a classic case for enforcement of international law through multilateral process.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 10:27 AM CST [link]

Kazakhstan Gets a Stake in Oil Field

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 31 - Kazakhstan's national oil company said Thursday it joined a group developing an oil field in the Caspian Sea by indirectly buying half of the BG Group's stake in the project.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jonathan Miller, head of communications for the BG Group, with headquarters in Reading, England, said it would sell its 16.67 percent stake in the Kashagan field for $1.8 billion to the other alliance members, which include Total of France, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips of the United States and the Agip unit of Eni of Italy, the operator. The group agreed to sell half the stake to the national oil company, KazMunaiGaz.

BG is fundamentally a gas company, and Kashagan is "a huge oil field" that does not fit the company's long-term strategy, Mr. Miller said.

The North Caspian P.S.A., as the project is called, is predicted to become one of the world's top fields by 2015, the biggest outside the Middle East, and to produce more than a million barrels a day.

Along with lesser fields, it is expected to propel Kazakhstan into the ranks of the world's top oil five exporters, with an expected production of more than three million barrels a day, nearly all of it to be exported.

The Kashagan project faces difficulties because the oil is laced with poisonous hydrogen sulfide that needs to be reinjected into the well at pressures never tried before. There are also management challenges.

In addition, the alliance's relations with the government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev have been so strained that the government's approval of the plan was delayed for more than a year in a fight over a fine. That pushed the target for production back two years to 2008.

The government, and much of the public, seems to think that the contract for the development of Kashagan gave an unfair advantage to the companies. BG agreed last year to sell its stake to its partners, but the Kazakh government said it had a pre-emptive right to the stake. The government's insistence on exercising that right raises questions as to whether the move will delay the development of the field, analysts said.

A spokesman for KazMunaiGaz could not be reached. The energy minister, Vladimir Shkolnik, has said that Kazakhstan, whose oil trade is dominated by Western companies, may pre-empt projects under a policy to regain control of the industry.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine,Georgia: this is what it's all about. Check the map. Check China.
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 10:19 AM CST [link]

Iraqi insurgents blow top off historic monument

Suspected insurgents yesterday blew up the top of a 9th-century Islamic minaret which is one of Iraq's most important heritage sites.

The blast punched a two-metre hole in the Malwiya, a spiralling yellow sandstone architectural wonder towering 50 metres (170ft) over Samarra, a flashpoint town north of Baghdad.

For centuries pilgrims and tourists have climbed the stairway winding up to the pinnacle. Built by Abbasid Caliph al-Motawakel in AD852, the structure appears on Iraq's 250-dinar bill.

Witnesses said the explosion had happened shortly after two men descended from the top. A US military spokesman blamed insurgents and said there had been no coalition troops at the site yesterday.

Residents said American snipers and Iraqi troops sometimes occupied the minaret. US-led troops took Samarra from insurgents in October. Last year a mortar blew a small hole in the tower.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 10:08 AM CST [link]

Yucca Scientists Investigated Over E-Mails

WASHINGTON (AP) - E-mails by several government scientists on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project suggest workers were planning to fabricate records and manipulate results to ensure outcomes that would help the project move forward.

``I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names,'' wrote a U.S. Geological Survey employee in one e-mail released Friday by a congressional committee investigating suspected document falsification on the project.

``This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff.''

In another message the same employee wrote to a colleague: ``In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used.'' QA apparently refers to ``quality assurance.''
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

This story is a parable for the state of most 'science' being conducted in the U.S.
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 10:03 AM CST [link]

'Baby Talk' May Help Infants Learn Language

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - That special tone of voice adults use with babies may be an important part of how infants learn language, a new study suggests.

Researchers have long suspected that "baby talk, "with its short sentences, slow pace and sing-song tone, helps infants start to distinguish words from other sounds. Direct evidence, however, has been lacking, and not particularly easy to get.

But in the new study, published in the journal Infancy, researchers found that the typical intonation of baby talk, with its swooping changes in pitch from word to word, seems to help babies begin to recognize where words begin and end.

Though it's not certain why this is, it's likely that a sing-song tone captures babies' attention better than the more monotone manner adults use with each other, according to lead author Erik D. Thiessen, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Music and poetry seem to me among the most ancient and finest characteristics of distinctly human beings, and a potent counterforce to violence and aggression. Play as a Precursor of Phonology and Syntax"> by anthropologist Chris Knight is a good essay that explores the ancient roots of human language.
rootsie on 04.02.05 @ 09:58 AM CST [link]

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