Israeli soldiers kill British journalist....

I am stunned that the mounting toll of foreigners killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) gets such short shrift in the U.S. media.

I have come to expect an appalling level of callousness when it comes to Palestinian deaths; after all, Americans have long de-humanized Palestinians, seeing them all as terrorists. This level of ignorance and prejudice is particularly unforgivable considering that the Israeli army's deadly toll on Palestinians is perpetrated with American foreign-aid dollars.

But I would have thought when the Israelis started shooting American, Danish and British peace activists and now a British journalist--not to mention, running down 21-year-old American, Rachel Corrie, with a bulldozer--the American media might have changed its tone. So far, it seems not. The coverage remains sparse and surprisingly forgiving.

The latest death was reported by Agence France Presse (via Common Dreams):

British television journalist James Miller died after being shot by Israeli troops in the southern town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokesman expressed "regret" at the death, but pointed out that the man had "taken great risks by being in a virtual war zone."

Miller, 35, was hit as he was filming a stand-up segment as part of a documentary he was making on the army's destruction of hundreds of homes of militants in the Palestinian territories.

Complete story here.

The standard--one might say, reflexive--IDF routine is apparent here. The Isreali military spokesperson expresses regret and claims "it was a mistake," or is "under investigation." Then the victim is blamed. Invariably, the attitude seems to be, put yourself in the path of my bullet, and your death is your fault, for my right to pull the trigger is inalienable.

Just how many "mistakes" need to happen before the actions are viewed as premeditated policy?

According to Agence France Presse, Miller's death brings to 3,207 the number of people killed in Israel and Palestine--2,419 Palestinians and 729 Israelis--since September, 2000.

You remember what happened then? On September 28, Ariel Sharon--then Israel's opposition leader, not yet prime minister--took a 34-minute stroll at the most disputed site in Jerusalem, what Jews call the Temple Mount and Palestinians the Haram as-Sharif mosque complex. He made sure to bring along some 1,000 armed soldiers and police officers, forestalling any pretext that he didn't know exactly what a provocation his actions represented. The resultant riots involved hundreds of Palestinians civilians and Israeli law enforcement forces and evolved into what is now called the Al Aqsa Intifada.

Sharon made the most of the havoc he had ignited, bringing down a government and parlaying a law-and-order platform into two consecutive terms as Israeli prime-minister.

Many of those killed by Israeli forces in the ensuing carnage have been children. The International Press Center (IPC) website, sponsored by the Palestinian State Information Service (SIS) says the following about the children killed and the IDF excuse that their deaths are mistakes:

...You find that “mistakes” are positively littering the Palestinian landscape. Israel may cling to the fallacy that the IDF is the most moral army in the world, but as the number of child deaths approaches 400, it is surely the most error-prone.

In the first Intifada, Israeli journalist Amira Hass calculated that a child was killed by the IDF every two weeks. In the current Intifada, that figure has climbed to three and a half every week. That’s seven every two weeks — an escalation of 700%. Careless, careless, careless.

Of course, it is absurd to try to continue categorizing this number of slain children as accidents. To use Amira Hass again, an IDF soldier rather gives the game away in her now famous Ha’aretz interview: “12 and up, you’re allowed to shoot ,” he said. “That’s what they tell us.”

Full piece here.

For those who don't know, Amira Hass is an Israeli reporter who lives and works in the occupied territories and whose work regularly appears in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. For samples, go here.

And a prophet of another sort....

Lacanian-Marxist philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, from Slovenia, is the subject of a profile by Rebeccca Mead in The New Yorker, on sale now. Three quotes bear repeating here (transcribed by hand):

"You probably saw the movie 'Minority Report,' in which people are arrested before they commit the crime," [Zizek] said. "Why does this sound familiar? This is the new model for international relations. The U.S. knows in advance who will attack you."

Like, I suspect, many of Zizek's quotes, this works both in the facetious sense, and--judging from the information Bush is trying to suppress in the 9/11 report--the factual sense.

Then, invoking the manipulation inherent in the "war on terror":

"The terrorist attack is taken for granted, but endlessly postponed," he said. "The true catastrophe is that we are living under a permanent threat of catastrophe."

Finally, in reference to what he calls the "creeping social change" this has brought about, illustrated by, among other things, the fact that "torture has become a legitimate subject of conversation," Zizek observed,

"It is not that the ends justify the means; the end is the means themselves."

Very interesting guy. But you've got to buy or borrow the magazine to read more.

War prophets profit....

How many in the Bush administration have links to the oil industry?

ExxonMobil, the world's biggest privately owned oil group and a target of street protesters, celebrated May Day by reporting the largest quarterly corporate profits in history at $7.04bn (£4.4bn).

[...]

Fadel Gheit, oil analyst with New York brokerage Fahnstock & Co, said groundbreaking profits had been driven by the Iraq war and strikes in Venezuela and Nigeria. "They [Exxon] had a very strong wind in their sail and they happened to have a very big sail....

That $7.04bn is in comparison to $2.09bn last year. More than three times the pleasure! And they're not the only one.

However, analysts say the record first-quarter profits will not be repeated because oil prices have already started to fall as the conflict in Iraq comes to an end.

Awww...but no worries: they can always start a war in another oil-producing nation!

Story here via Common Dreams.

Second thoughts....

On my strong criticism of the Hyde AIDS bill, passed yesterday.

I remain outraged that conservatives have attached religiously-braided strings to the money, especially in a nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state.

That said, the amount of aid approved deserves recognition. Depending on reports, it either doubles or even triples the amount the U.S. formerly budgeted to fight AIDS worldwide. And it will be going to a variety of programs, even to those that distribute condoms.

What peeves me, however, is the amount of adulation being showered on the administration for doing, in part only, the right thing for a change. The thing which, in reality, should have been done decades ago.

The lack of context and criticism in the media coverage illustrates a disturbing trend, in which an extremely conservative administration--in this case, Bush's--deviates slightly in its overwhelmingly reactionary path and is praised to the heights for its "bi-partisanship" or its "defiance" of party radicals, or its largess. When in reality, what Congress (and Bush) did yesterday only looks good by comparison to their normally abysmal record.

The rest is government and corporately-owned media spin.

Religious conservatives: 34; Women's reproductive freedom: 1.

Still, it makes you more hopeful....

UNITED NATIONS - Two American women angered by the U.S. decision to stop funding the U.N. population agency said Thursday their grassroots campaign has so far raised $1 million for the agency, money that will go to helping women in poor nations.

More than 100,000 people - the vast majority Americans - have contributed to their campaign, which began in October, after President Bush blocked $34 million for the U.N. Population Fund last year, accusing the agency of tolerating abortions and forced sterilizations in China.[Emphasis mine.]

Jane Roberts, a retired teacher from California, and Lois Abraham, a lawyer from New Mexico, are still a long way from their stated goal of raising the entire $34 million that has been withheld. But media mogul Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, created to manage his $1 billion gift to the U.N., announced it would match the campaign's donations with 25 cents to the dollar, up to a total of $250,000. Moreover, 200 letters with contributions arrive every day.

The women plan to take the campaign worldwide, starting in Europe on May 7.

Complete story here via Common Dreams.

Will they get away with it...?

The following is from Newsweek, via Common Dreams:

Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.

Astonishingly, the Bush administration is not only blocking efforts to release an 800+-page report, prepared by a joint congressional inquiry into the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded 9/11, they're seeking to reclassify materials that are already widely disseminated.

Like the now famous July, 2001, Phoenix-FBI memo reporting that Middle Eastern nationals might be enrolling in U.S. flight schools. The article quoted one intelligence official as saying, just because something has been inadvertently released, doesn't make it unclassified.

And they impeached Clinton for his verbal quibbling!

According to Newsweek, the administration's motives for keeping the report under wraps could be to avoid political embarrassment (No...!) or merely in response to the ingrained culture of secrecy that permeates the highest levels of the White House. (Why not both?) Whichever, the two congressional members who oversaw the report--Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss--are said to be really mad and they're preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Oh yeah, that will solve the problem.

The real question is, will the electorate let Bush conceal his administration's failings vis-a-vis 9/11, and at the same time re-elect him when he cynically plays on the terrible event's strong emotions?

...The White House is delaying the Republican nominating convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in September 2004-the latest in the party's history. That would allow Bush's acceptance speech, now slated for Sept. 2, to meld seamlessly into 9-11 commemoration events due to take place in the city the next week. [This makes me physically ill....]

Some sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States-and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike in the coming weeks, the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.

Newsweek sources claim Bush himself was present at that briefing.

It will come as no surprise that some administration officials are expressing regret that the sensitive material was ever provided to Congress in the first place. Yep, this is an administration that believes strongly in checks and balances!

We have got to make sure that Bush does not win a second term.

Complete story here.

Looks like my skepticism was warranted after all....

The House passed, by a 375-41 vote, the Hyde bill that I talked about yesterday, which would more than double U.S. contributions to the worldwide fight against AIDS. But not without Conservative's tacking on two amendments.

The House approved, 220-197, an amendment by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., requiring that one-third of funds spent on prevention go to abstinence programs. ``It's important that we not just send them money, but we send them values that work,'' said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., a supporter of Pitts' proposal.

And....

The House approved an amendment by Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., to strengthen protections for religious groups. Smith and others said that Catholic groups, which object to condom distribution, care for one-fourth of AIDS victims worldwide.

The White House even issued a statement supporting language that would ``prioritize the abstinence component of the ABC [Uganda's AIDS program] approach.''

So, yesterday's L.A. Times story, claiming wide support in the House only if the amendments were left off, was misleading, to say the least.

And, Bush's "rare defiance of the social conservatives within his own party," emphasized in yesterday's N.Y. Times article, was a downright lie.

From what I'm reading, Bush and his Right-Wing fundamentalist cronies haven't changed their AIDS agenda at all. They've simply agreed to give more money to the fight against a worldwide epidemic that is devastating Africa and other third-world nations--and which, in the 1980's, decimated the Gay community.

And being very self-congratulatory about it. Look at these quotes:

``So much of what we do is really unimportant and trivial, but not today,'' said Hyde, R-Ill., chief sponsor of the measure...

``We are doing probably the greatest thing that we have done since I have been in Congress,'' said Rep. Donald Payne, an eight-term Democrat from New Jersey.

More money is good--don't get me wrong. Also, don't try to tell me the zebra is changing his stripes when all he's really doing is rolling around in the mud.

Whole story here.

Only in San Diego....

In NPR's pledge-drive this morning, they were hyping a challenge grant for matching funds from "Gays and Lesbians for Programming Excellence," while at the same time an announcer was enthusiastically promoting the president's visit to San Diego and scheduled speech this evening. The reporter was waxing nostalgic about a night he spent on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln where Bush is to give the speech and also sleep the night.

I am surprised....

I woke up this morning to news that the U.S. will be closing its military bases in Saudi Arabia.

Wow....That act alone, had it been accomplished without war, would have done more to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks from Arab radicals than anything Bush has done to date.

Of course, there has been a war. And, some rumors suggest the U.S. might relocate its military bases from a temporary home in Qatar to Iraq. The Bush administration is denying those rumors. So we'll see.

In the meantime, we'll also see if the unpopular Saudi regime can stand on its own.

Whoo-whoo...!

You've probably all seen this one by now....

BAGHDAD - The retired general overseeing Iraq's postwar reconstruction said on Wednesday that his fellow Americans should beat their chests with pride at having toppled Saddam Hussein without destroying the country's assets.

"We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans!'," Jay Garner told reporters.....

Funny, no mention of the Iraqi National Museum....The next quote clarifies the Bush administration's priorities--if there was ever any doubt.

"I was planning on the oilfields [sic] being torched, a huge humanitarian crisis and a monumental reconstruction task, " he said.

"There is no humanitarian crisis ... and there's not much infrastructure problem here, other than getting the electrical grid structure back together."

No humanitarian crisis? Not much infrastructure problem? (Odd sentence infrastructure, though.) Obviously, all these guys ever cared about was damage to their precious oil fields.

One more thing: hasn't humanity evolved beyond the chest-beating stage?!

I wish we could round up all these smug, selfish, Right-Wing, homophobic, nationalistic, fundamentalist chauvinist types--of all religious and national stripes--so hellbent on fighting bombing torturing poisoning drilling polluting surveilling hoarding and hypocritically forbidding, give them an empty, lifeless planet of their own, and let them go at one another to their little hearts content, while leaving the rest of us to live our lives honorably, generously, sustainably and in peace!

Or, at the very least, I wish that Bush had accepted Hussein's pre-war challenge to a duel and the war had ended there.

Article here. Thanks to Common Dreams and This Modern World.

ABC's con't....

I just read the L.A. Times story on the Hyde AIDS bill, and it also took the line that Bush is opposing his conservative base on this one. The article says the bill has wide House support, as long at the proposed amendments (re: abstinence set-asides and religious exemptions) are left off.

Hmmmm...maybe my skepticism is misplaced here. Or maybe this is yet another instance of the lapdog press licking the hand that feeds them. Either way, this will be one bill to watch as it makes its way through Congress.

L.A. Times story here.

Let's all recite our ABC's now....

In a N.Y. Times story on a House bill, sponsored by Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Illinois, that would triple American global AIDS spending to $15 billion over the next 5 years, sending money to prevention and treatment programs in 12 African nations, Haiti and Guyana, the reporter makes it sound like President Bush has uncharacteristically put saving the lives of AIDS sufferers ahead of religious dogma.

WASHINGTON, April 29 — In rare defiance of the social conservatives within his own party, President Bush today urged Congress to fight AIDS internationally with a $15 billion plan that advocates condom use and in effect permits money to go to groups that promote abortion.

Read between the lines, though, and it becomes clear Bush hasn't had a sudden change of heart.

...he [Bush] was careful to make one of his central arguments in the biblical language of Christian conservatives, many of whom have taken on fighting AIDS as a moral cause.

"When we see a plague leaving graves and orphans across a continent, we must act," Mr. Bush said. "When we see the wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not — America will not — pass to the other side of the road."

The president still strongly supports the conservatives' position that abstinence is the only cure for AIDS. He has not backed down from federal government policy, in effect since Reagan's presidency, that prevents U.S. AIDS money from going to international groups that promote abortion. In fact, Congressional conservatives plan to amendment the Hyde bill to set aside a third of the money for abstinence programs and to exempt religious groups from having to hand out condoms.

Here's the heart of the Conservative's AIDS prevention plan, modeled on Uganda's "A.B.C. Campaign," and endorsed in the Hyde bill:

...First, abstain. If you can't abstain, be faithful. And if you can't be faithful, use a condom.

Sounds more like catechism than an endorsement of what the mainstream medical establishment has concluded is the most effective means of preventing the spread of AIDS: responsible condom use.

So, why did the reporter open with such a deceptively upbeat lead? Maybe the answer lies in the article's final paragraph:

Congressional aides who have visited humanitarian groups in Africa said today that the amendments — and the administration's commitment to make sure that AIDS money does not mingle with money for family planning — had little to do with how the groups actually operated. They acknowledged that the last-minute haggling was entirely driven by American domestic politics.

While I firmly believe in the final sentence, I'd hate to put my faith--and the lives of potential AIDS sufferers--in the hands of "Congressional aides." We've seen this administration's track record on truth-telling regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As a reporter, I interviewed AIDS workers from Africa in the early 1990's. One person told me of a Catholic priest, in a remote parish--I can't remember the country--who was counseling his parishioners to destroy condoms because it was a sin to use them.

At the time, health worker after health worker from Africa was telling me how they had solid AIDS education and prevention programs in place, the local population was receptive to the message of condom-use, but there were no condoms. They were too expensive and beyond the reach of poverty-stricken African health budgets.

How many people died of AIDS on account of the priest who made piles of hard-to-get condoms and burned them?

Conservative in Congress, preaching abstinence, opposing condom distribution and de-funding abortion, have blood on their hands.

Meanwhile, in China....

BEIJING, April 30 — In a live, televised news conference today the new acting Mayor of Beijing called the SARS epidemic severe and uncontrolled as he sought to convince a panicky public that the battle against the dangerous, fatal new disease is effectively joined at last.

[...]

Beijing imposed stringent quarantine measures only in the last week, as the reported number of confirmed SARS cases in Beijing was zooming 10 days ago from below 350 to 1,440 today, not including a similar high total of suspected cases.

About 9,000 city residents have been put in isolation because of possible exposure to the infection, officials reported this morning.

The city's public health agencies were overwhelmed by the sudden, initially denied outbreak and still are unable to perform vital analysis of how fast the virus is spreading and where.

For the whole story, go here.

WHO lifts Toronto travel advisory....

TORONTO, April 29 — Citing an ebb in the SARS epidemic here, the World Health Organization today lifted a week-old advisory urging travelers to delay all nonessential visits to Toronto.

The decision was welcomed with sighs of relief from Canadian officials, who had lobbied hard for the reversal and disputed the W.H.O. contention that Toronto had been a source of cases outside Canada. They argued that the advisory unnecessarily damaged the Canadian economy and its international image.

But the reversal of an advisory declared only last Wednesday raised questions about the W.H.O.'s decision-making process and whether it had given in to intense pressure from a country with enormous sway in the agency's parent organization, the United Nations.

What do you think? Me, I suspect that lifting the advisory won't make a whole lot of difference, at this point. People who would have heeded it are unlikely to suddenly feel safe to visit. And those who visit now, probably would have gone before.

Full story here.

Again...?

FALLUJA, Iraq, April 30 — United States soldiers opened fire here today on marchers protesting a clash late Monday night in which 15 anti-American demonstrators were reported killed by American troops. The city's mayor and hospital officials said two protesters were killed in today's incident and 14 were wounded.

A United States Army officer said soldiers in a convoy passing the demonstrators were shot at, and then returned fire. There was no immediate indication of any American casualties.

About 1,000 residents marching down Falluja's main street stopped today in front of a battalion headquarters of the United States Army's 82nd Airborne Division, in a compound formerly occupied by Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The demonstrators were carrying signs condemning Monday night's shooting. [Emphasis mine.]

I was surprised to find out that the Americans have occupied the former Baath Party headquarters in Falluja. Now, isn't it simple common sense that when you've invaded a country to "liberate" it from a generally unpopular regime and you're trying to reassure the populace that you are definitely not there to replace that regime or occupy their country, you would distance yourself in every way possible from the regime? Like, for instance, not setting up your command center in their former headquarters ?

Of course, you also would avoid shooting unarmed demonstrators. But what do I know?

Judging from the following quote, Lt. Col. Tobin Green, commander of the Second Squadron of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is taking over from the 82nd Airborne in Falluja (and getting off to a smashing start), is an ardent follower of our fearless national leader.

"The evildoers are deliberately placing at risk the good civilians," Colonel Green told The Associated Press. "These are deliberate actions by the enemy to use the population as cover."

Yes, and your's and the president's vocabulary and worldview have not evolved since the second grade.

I'm sure Colonel Green will quickly grasp the complexity of the sensitive, volatile situation and we can expect a vast improvement in the upcoming days.

Full story here.

Just who exactly is a "good" American...?

The anniversary is fast approaching of another peace demonstration in which innocent protestors were shot dead by soldiers poorly trained at crowd control....

The facts are these: On May 4, 1970, Kent State University students rallied to protest President Nixon's decision to expand the Vietnam conflict into Cambodia. Poorly trained Ohio National Guard troops were called to the campus, where, after some mild skirmishing with the students, they fired without warning, killing four and wounding nine. Only one of the casualties had been harassing the Guard; another had been on her way to class when she was shot and killed.

David Kirby's op-ed in today's Christian Science Monitor, goes on to talk about pro-war sentiment--and hypocrisy--during times of national crisis.

A nationwide Gallup telephone poll taken on May 13 and 14 [1970] found that 58 percent of the respondents thought the students responsible for the deaths while only 11 percent blamed the National Guard (31 percent had no opinion).

This antiprotestor sentiment wasn't a momentary aberration, either: Five years later, in a federal civil trial against the guardsmen and the politicians who sent them onto the campus, the jury voted 9 to 3 for the defendants, a decision later reversed on appeal.

[...]

Many of my clients [Kirby was a draft counselor then] hated the war, but just as many thought American boys should answer the call proudly - other American boys, that is. These young men were pro-war, but they didn't relish going to battle themselves...Nowadays, media images and selective memories make it seem as though most people who lived through that time were opposed to the war. Back then, it didn't seem that way at all.

Curiously, recent revelations show that the very architects of the Vietnam war were opposed to it.

In 1995, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed in his memoirs that he had known the war was wrong.

And from Michael Beschloss's "Reaching for Glory: The Secret Lyndon Johnson Tapes, 1964-1965," we learn that, very early in the war, Johnson confessed, "I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out."

I seriously doubt history will show similar doubt or regret on the parts of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle. One of the scariest things about these guys is how absolutely cocksure of themselves they are. Like crusaders throughout history, they genuinely believe "God" is on their side.

Kirby concludes powerfully, in words that could just as well apply to today.

Who was the "good American" in 1970? We may tell ourselves differently now, but the truth is it was someone who thought the cowards with blood on their hands in the White House were swell fellows.

It's easy to blame our political leaders for the things we don't like. But we need to remember that these leaders take their cues from the public that keeps them in office, a public that, in this case, said the war was OK and that anybody who opposed it was wrong. Indeed, anybody who merely attended college on a campus where protests occurred ran the risk of being shot dead walking to class.

(Thanks, Chad, for the heads-up on this...!)

Hate to say we told you so....

ALLUJAH, Iraq, April 30 — United States soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at an antiwar demonstration here, and according to local hospital officials killed 15 people and wounded about 75. An American officer said today that the troops opened fire after being "intentionally" shot at by some of the protesters, a claim disputed by residents.

Local people said the firing by the Americans was unprovoked as about 200 to 300 demonstrators late Monday night roamed between the United States Army headquarters and in front of a local school, which the Americans took over a few days ago.

The demonstrators "intentionally engaged American soldiers," said Capt. Mike Riedmuller, commanding officer of an Army troop with the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad.

Well, of course we fired! They deliberately enraged us. What else do you do when somebody, whose country you've just bombed to rubble and whose (grammar?) school you've just occupied, deliberately enrages you by holding a peace demonstration?

Riedmuller claimed that American soldiers only fired shots on people with weapons, yet at least one 15-year-old 9th-grader, Ahmed Mohammed Awad, was wounded in the clash. I know, a 9th-grader is plenty old enough to aim and fire an AK-47. Still, it looks bad, and in this situation, appearance matter as much--or more--than truth. Al Jazeera and other worldwide media outlets are running with the graphic footage of wounded and dead Iraqis and the incident is inflaming already virulent anti-American sentiments throughout the Arab world.

This story illustrates perfectly what people opposed to this war feared beforehand. We never doubted that the might of the U.S. military would easily roll over Iraqi defenders. That was a foregone conclusion. What we worried about was the aftermath.

The U.S. grunt on the ground in Iraq, now in charge of traffic control, aid distribution, restoration of utilities and services, maintenance of civil order, etc. does not speak Arabic, doesn't have the first clue about Iraqi culture, mores, or religious, ethnic and gender divisions--and doesn't care to! He most likely thinks all Moslems are terrorists and blames them for 9/11. Armed-to-the-teeth and trained to kill, these soldiers are unfit to control the civilian administration of an embittered nation, particularly while the vast majority of the rest of the world looks on, willing the U.S. to fail.

Inevitability, no matter what we do--even if, as will eventually occur, it is justified in the name of the self-defense of beleaguered and outnumbered American soldiers--will be misconstrued and used as propaganda against us.

Moreover, in this era--and especially in this part of the world--propaganda against us often leads to, god forbid, more attempted 9/11's.

Full story here.

Thomas Hurndall and American hate....

I reported on 4/11/03 that British peace activist, Thomas Hurndall, had been shot in the back of the head by an Israeli Defense Forces sniper while snatching two children out of harm's way in the southern Gaza Strip.

According to this story in the Christian Science Monitor, Hurndall still lingers on in a deep coma some 2-1/2 weeks later. How tragically sad for his family and loved-ones....

The CSM article profiles the nonviolent peace movement in Palestine and Israel, making the point that it has been far too easy to overlook the long history of nonviolence in the region. To be honest, I never knew such a history existed--and I've lived in Israel.

The collapse of the peace process demoralized the Israeli left, but its members still organize actions. Israeli and foreign activists often accompany Palestinians during olive harvests to protect them from attacks by Israeli settlers.

Palestinian peaceful resistance began on a large scale in 1967 with strikes and boycotts against Israel, which had just seized the territories. It may have culminated in the first months of the Palestinian uprising of 1978 to 1993, with widespread nonviolent resistance to Israel's occupation.

One shocking mention in the story involves Rachel Corrie, the young American killed by a bulldozer in March while demonstrating with The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Palestine. ISM's mission is to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance by working with Palestinians who otherwise would face "harsh punishment from Israeli forces."

Apparently, the organization has been inundated with a torrent of hate mail in the wake of Corrie's death.

How heartwarming. Once again, the Far Right demonstrates its much heralded "compassionate conservatism."

In the aftermath of every high-profile hate-crime in this country--the murders of transgendered teen, Gwen Araujo, in the S.F. Bay Area; African-American, James Byrd,Jr., in Jasper, Texas; and gay college student, Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming, to name a few--the cockroaches crawl out of the wall and brave the light of day.

Think I'm exaggerating the level of their vitriol? Then check out Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" site, where the infamous Baptist preacher of hate catalogs Matthew Shepard's days in Hell. With the proper plugins, you can even run your mouse over Matthew's photo in the dancing flames and hear him scream.

I kid you not. It is vile. And it has been up on the Web for years.

And they dare to call us sinful?

And the gravy train rolls on....

Oxfam has expressed outrage over the man the Bush junta has put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. From the Guardian/UK:

Dan Amstutz is a former senior executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter in the world, and served in the Reagan administration as a trade negotiator in the Uruguay round of world trade talks.

Oxfam is concerned that his involvement is an example of the potentially damaging commercialization of the reconstruction effort in Iraq, which it would prefer to see conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.

Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said Mr Amstutz would "arrive with a suitcase full of open-market rhetoric", and was more likely to try to dump cheap US grain on the potentially lucrative Iraqi market than encourage the country to rebuild its once-successful agricultural sector.

"Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission," Mr Watkins said.

Oxfam is worried that Amstutz will advance the commercial interests of American grain companies by busting open the Iraqi market, and leave the Iraqi agricultural sector unprotected from cutthroat US competition at the crucial early stages of its reconstruction.

Full story here, via Common Dreams.

Surprise...!

Jump, now! Come on, jump through the hoops!

I honestly can't believe the media is still all over these stories of chemical weapons in Iraq. In this one, detailing the capture of Iraqi arms monitor, Hussam Mohammed Amin, the L.A. Times repeated U.S. military hopes--uh, claims--about the latest "find."

U.S. Special Forces operating near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji late last week found more than a dozen 55-gallon drums full of chemicals and two mobile chemical labs in a field surrounded by surface-to-air missiles.

The 10th Cavalry Regiment was called in, and preliminary tests showed the presence of cyclosarin, a nerve agent, as well as a blister agent that may be mustard gas, military officials said.

U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman with the U.S. Central Command in Qatar, said that only field tests had been done and laboratory tests would be needed to make a final determination.

Some past chemical finds have turned out to be pesticides. But coalition forces are hoping Amin will help lead them to the so far elusive weapons that were one of the major stated reasons for attacking Iraq on March 20. [Emphasis mine.]

I'll bet they are!

When I read the story, I yawned and thought, What'll be this time? Creosote? Raid? Cleaning fluid?

Not far off. According to the AP, the substance turned out to be rocket fuel.

BAIJI, Iraq (AP) - A metal drum found in northern Iraq that initially tested positive for nerve and blister agents might instead contain rocket fuel, according to new tests, a U.S. chemical weapons expert said Monday.

Give it up, Bush! Or go out there and plant some evidence of your own....

AP story here. (Thanks, MyWay.)

A little html knowledge, is a dangerous thing....

Hope I haven't rendered y'all color-blind by playing with these different hues...I'm almost done, so bear with me! Then I'll get back to the "real meat" of this blog, the commentary. (Ugh, what a metaphor for a vegetarian to employ!)

Happy birthday to you, hap....

Yep, it's Papa Hussein's birthday! He's 66--that is, if he's alive. I haven't heard any triumphant proclamations to the contrary from on high, so I assume it's likely.

I, for one, hope he is. I don't wish a horrible death at the business end of one of our bunker-busters on anyone, not even a truly evil dictator.

I'd rather see him dragged kicking and screaming before the World Court, to stand trial for his atrocities. Taking out leaders of sovereign nations via air-strike is a practice I repudiate on principle.

As far as celebrations go, I imagine he's had better....

SARS success story....

The World Health Organization announced today that Vietnam has become the first nation to contain SARS. The country's success in registering no new outbreaks in 20 days--twice the illness' incubation period--has been credited to actions of WHO doctor Carlo Urbani. Based in Vietnam, Urbani quickly recognized the disease's virulence and urged swift-acting health officials to initiate comprehensive quarantine measures as soon as the first cases appeared. Tragically, Urbani died of SARS on March 29, at age 46. (See Krieg9 4/10/03)

In the meantime, Hong Kong and China, both hard hit by the disease, are scrambling to prevent its spread. Travelers leaving from Hong Kong's international airport are being subjected to body temperature checks (!) and anyone with a fever is being kept off the planes. (A lot fewer colds are being spread, too, I'd wager....)

In China, meantime, officials have moved to close movie theaters, discos, and karaoke parlors and workers are laboring to construct a 1,000-bed "field hospital" outside Beijing to isolate patients.

Full story here.

Talk back....

I've just spent the last several hours taxing the limits of my patience, html skills and the capabilities of my ancient Powerbook 2400c's 180MHz processor making format changes to this site, the biggest of which is a link that will--hopefully-- appear in all posts from now on, transforming this into a 2 (or-more) way dialog.

Now, the rest is up to you.