Malas intenciones desde el 11-S por Noam Chomsky

No es una tarea fácil adquirir cierta comprensión de los asuntos humanos. En algunos aspectos, es más difícil que con las ciencias naturales. La madre naturaleza no nos facilita las respuestas, pero al menos no se desvía de su camino para erigir barreras al conocimiento. En cuestiones humanas, en cambio, es necesario detectar y desmantelar estos obstáculos.

El proceso bolivariano en la coyuntura latinoamericana

Elementos de tendencia en la coyuntura larga latinoamericana

1.- La transición entre siglos encuentra a América Latina como región inserta en tres procesos básicos:

a) la globalización o mundialización inducida

b) el “consenso de Washington” que debería abrir paso a un Tratado de Libre Comercio Americano

c) la democratización (gobiernos civiles electos) bajo la forma de democracias poliárquicas restrictivas (poliarquías restrictivas). Estos tres procesos se dan en relación con un eje común: la extinción de un proyecto nacional de desarrollo y, con ello, la liquidación en la práctica de las tesis o imaginarios sobre la presencia o ausencia de una burguesía nacional en el subcontinente. No existe desarrollo nacional: puede o no existir un crecimiento precario derivado de una inserción en la lógica trasnacional de acumulación de capital. Los protagonistas “locales” de este crecimiento son políticos/empresarios trasnacionalizados y tecnócratas privados y públicos.

After Katrina, We Must Impeach Bush, Cheney, Chertoff

The longer we delay the necessary and principled impeachment process against Bush Jr. and his neo-conservative apparatchiks, the greater will be the disaster for all the peoples of the world and even here in the United States. Witness the racist and class-based criminal mistreatment inflicted by the Bush Jr. administration upon the victims of Hurricane Katrina. President Bush Jr., Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff must all be impeached immediately for denying Equal Protection of the Laws to the Katrina Victims because they are African Americans and because they are Poor in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Their criminal negligence and resulting mass homicides constitute "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" within the meaning of Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution quoted above.

Rich Countries' Problem Too much military – Too little humanity

The United States of America launched its invasion against Iraq on March 20, 2003. On March 21, the American Physical Society emailed Dr. Daniel Amit, an eminent Israeli physicist, seeking his review of a scientific paper. That same day came his two sentence reply: “I will not at this point correspond with any American institution. Some of us have lived through 1939.”

On April 8, the Editor-in-Chief acknowledged Dr. Amit’s refusal while holding out hope that in the not too distant future he reconsider his position because, “We regard science as an international enterprise and we do our best to put aside political disagreements…”

The following day came Dr. Amit’s eloquent reply: “Thank you for you letter of April 8. I would have liked to be able to share the honorable sentiments you express in your letter as well as your optimism in the future role of science and the scientific community. To be frank, and with much sadness and pain, after 40 years of activity and collaboration, I find very little reason for such optimism. What we are watching today, I believe, is a culmination of 10-15 years of mounting barbarism of the American culture the world over, crowned by the achievements of science and technology as a major weapon of mass destruction.

“We are witnessing man hunt and wanton killing of the type and scale not seen since the raids on American Indian populations, by a superior technological power of inferior culture and values. We see no corrective force to restrain the insanity, the self-righteousness and the lack of respect for human life (civilian and military) of another race.

The War for Latinos

Jessica Sanchez poses an urgent threat to the US military. For a Pentagon stretched by stagnating enlistments and an Administration bent on waging a "global war on terror," the question of whether this four-foot-eleven Mexican-born legal resident and others like her will decide to join the military has enormous geopolitical implications.

The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to find out whatever it can about Sanchez and other young Latinos: what they wear, where they hang out, what kinds of groups they form, what they read, what they watch on TV, their grades, their dreams. Members of the military's numerous and well-funded recruiting commands use sophisticated Geographic Information Systems maps, souped-up recruiting Hummers and other resources to establish strategic positions in the minds, pocketbooks and neighborhoods of young Latinos like Sanchez.

Recruiters are devising new and often unexpected ways to penetrate daily Latino life. "I went to a birthday celebration at Chuck E. Cheese's," says Sanchez, a 25-year-old single mom from San Marcos, California, just outside San Diego. "We were watching a puppet show when all of a sudden a military song is playing in the background. I thought that was weird but kept watching. A couple of minutes later, all of us were looking at pictures on a TV screen of people in the Army giving food and supplies to kids in Iraq. My friends and I thought that was really weird - and got out."

The bad news for Pentagon planners is not just Sanchez's negative reaction to the puppet show, or even her eventual decision not to join the Navy. It's that she and other Latinos who are rejecting the military's overtures are turning around and organizing a grassroots movement against recruitment in their community.

The War for Latinos

Jessica Sanchez poses an urgent threat to the US military. For a Pentagon stretched by stagnating enlistments and an Administration bent on waging a "global war on terror," the question of whether this four-foot-eleven Mexican-born legal resident and others like her will decide to join the military has enormous geopolitical implications.

The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to find out whatever it can about Sanchez and other young Latinos: what they wear, where they hang out, what kinds of groups they form, what they read, what they watch on TV, their grades, their dreams. Members of the military's numerous and well-funded recruiting commands use sophisticated Geographic Information Systems maps, souped-up recruiting Hummers and other resources to establish strategic positions in the minds, pocketbooks and neighborhoods of young Latinos like Sanchez.

Recruiters are devising new and often unexpected ways to penetrate daily Latino life. "I went to a birthday celebration at Chuck E. Cheese's," says Sanchez, a 25-year-old single mom from San Marcos, California, just outside San Diego. "We were watching a puppet show when all of a sudden a military song is playing in the background. I thought that was weird but kept watching. A couple of minutes later, all of us were looking at pictures on a TV screen of people in the Army giving food and supplies to kids in Iraq. My friends and I thought that was really weird - and got out."

The bad news for Pentagon planners is not just Sanchez's negative reaction to the puppet show, or even her eventual decision not to join the Navy. It's that she and other Latinos who are rejecting the military's overtures are turning around and organizing a grassroots movement against recruitment in their community.

U.S. Decertifies Venezuela on Drug Control

The Cubanization of United States policy toward Venezuela has begun in earnest. Yesterday, President George W. Bush released his findings on drug war “certification” – the highly politicized list the White House has produced since the mid-1980s of which countries are doing their part in “international” drug control efforts, and which have “failed demonstrably.”
Only two countries did not make the cut this year. The first was perennially-decertified Myanmar (Burma). The second was, as the State Department threatened last month, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela…

Locals, Officials Suggest Levees were Intentionally Blown

Could the levees in New Orleans have been INTENTIONALLY blown out in order to provide the justification for total FEMA federal takeover?

The locals certainly seem to think so, yet, as usual, the mainstream media is barely picking up on this wave of opinion, so it is left to us once again to bring the issue into the open.

This website distances itself from claims that the levees were blown to target the lower class areas and save the richer areas. The fact is that the disaster affected everyone, and now that the lower classes have largely been evacuated, the middle class are being targeted by door to door raids. Jack booted thugs are arresting people if they don’t leave and confiscating their firearms.

When Katrina hit, it drifted 15 miles to the east of where forecasters said it would strike. Therefore it wasn’t quite the monster described. The storm passed through with relatively minor damage, it was the the storm surge from the Gulf that caused Lake Pontchartrain to rise three feet and the subsequent flooding.

Support the St. Patric's Four!

First Fedral Conspiracy Trial Of Anti-War Protesters Since Vietnam

Summary. Two days before the invasion of Iraq, four Catholic Workers from Ithaca (NY), in an act of non-violent civil resistance, entered a military recruiting center, read a statement, and carefully poured their own blood around the vestibule. The four, all parents, were tried in Tompkins County Court in April 2004 on charges of criminal mischief. Nine of twelve jurors voted to acquit.

However, almost a year later, the US government decided to retry the four, now on charges of conspiracy. If convicted, they face up to six years in prison and $250,000 in fines. The St. Patrick's Four trial begins September 19 in Binghamton, NY.

DIEB-THROAT : 'Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known'

* EXCLUSIVE! * A DIEBOLD INSIDER SPEAKS!

Identifies U.S. Homeland Security 'Cyber Alert' Prior to '04 Election Warning Votes Can be 'Modified Remotely' via 'Undocumented Backdoor' in Central Tabulator Software!

In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.

Electricity Turned On In New Orleans Neighborhood For Bush, Turned Off When He Left...

Lights in New Orleans. For Bush.

Brian Williams:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.


No jumping required to reach those conclusions.

Read the Wayne Madsen Report

"Synagogues" and demagogues

George Bush has condemned the Palestinians for destroying the "synagogues" of Gaza. What complete and utter nonsense. Leaving those buildings standing, when the Israelis had demolished every other building they had occupied, was nothing more than a cynical ploy, which Bush fell for, or rather, took the opportunity to demagogue about, since not even Bush is stupid enough to have "fallen for" something so transparent. The deputy chairman of the French parliament claimed it was "reminiscent" of acts of Nazi anti-Semites, cleverly smearing the Palestinians without actually calling them anti-Semites. In fact, these buildings no longer had anything to do with Judaism, but they had everything to do with occupation.
In the U.S. (and, I guess, elsewhere), small suburban Jewish congregations will occasionally share a building with a congregation of another faith. What makes a building a synagogue isn't that it was built by Jews, or that Jews have on occasion worshipped there; what makes it a synagogue as far as I can determine is the presence of one or more Torahs. And I feel rather confident in saying that there were no Torahs left in the "synagogues" of Gaza.

If the buildings themselves had been so sacred, the Israelis could have torn them down brick by brick and rebuilt them elsewhere, or just jacked the building up and towed it away. Not only weren't they synagogues any more, they weren't even sacred -- some of them, at least, had most recently been used as fortresses from which the occupants could actually attack not just their fellow human beings, but their fellow Jews no less.

"Abou Moussab Al-Zarkaoui est mort. Son nom est utilisé par les occupants pour rester en Irak"

Zarqawi is dead. His name is being used by the Occupiers of Iraq to maintain power

Cheikh Jawad Al-Khalessi est imam chiite de la mosquée Al-Kazemiya, à Bagdad, et doyen de l'école religieuse attenante. Il est de passage à Paris après la rencontre interreligieuse de Sant'Egidio, à Lyon.

Abou Moussab Al-Zarkaoui a déclaré la "guerre totale" aux chiites et perpétré le massacre le plus sanglant à Bagdad, mercredi 14 septembre, depuis le début de la guerre en Irak. Que pensez-vous de cette déclaration ?

America's 'Mental Defectives' Confront Iran

On a recent visit to a periodicals room in the Joe Paterno wing of Penn State's Pattee Library I ran across a fascinating journal, The Long Term View, published by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Its Spring 2004 issue was entirely devoted to the question, "Why We Seek War" and its editor, Lawrence R. Velvel, commenced his introduction by asserting: "The United States is a nation which seeks war. We better change or we may end up destroying ourselves and perhaps even the world." [p.3]

Mr. Velvel provides some twenty-one reasons why Americans seek war, but I was especially intrigued by reason number six: "Government is incompetent and its leaders stupid." [p.9] Velvel offers many persuasive reasons for government incompetence (which should not prevent us from acknowledging widespread incompetence in the private sector), but he's less persuasive when attempting to explain why leaders become stupid.

True, Velvel gets close when he observes: "politicians, who run government, care little about truth, accuracy, honesty, or any of those other disposable attributes. They care far more about what can be spun, sold, and made to sound good, so that they will get votes." [Ibid.] Were one to add that most politicians these days are driven by ideology, then he arrives at our present day phenomenon: the ideological moron.

Imperial Propagandists

Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, there is much talk about the opinions and views of Western “experts” on Iraq. With the exception of very few honourable voices, the majority of Western “experts” are imperial propagandists complicit in U.S. war crimes against the Iraqi people.

As flood waters recede, more racist gov’t atrocities exposed

The ravages of capitalism continue to be exposed in the aftermath of Katrina, as even more stories highlighting the official hostility and neglect toward the poor and people of color of the region—before, during and after the hurricane—are brought to worldwide attention.

Two paramedics from California trapped in New Orleans by the storm after attending a conference there wrote a gripping account of their experiences that appeared first in Socialist Worker, circulated widely on the Internet, and eventually was picked up by other media.

Venezuelan Leader Lashes at US in UN Speech

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called the United States a "terrorist state" and said the United Nations headquarters should be moved away from New York.

The outspoken Chavez littered his speech to the UN world summit with anti-US comments which were strongly applauded. The ally of Cuba's President Fidel Castro followed this up with a press conference at which he accused the US administration of supporting terrorism.

March on Washington

Venezuela's Chavez Says UN Needs a Revolution

Caracas, Venezuela, September 15, 2005—Venezuela’s President Chavez, in a fiery 22 minute speech at the opening of the 60th UN General Assembly, called for a revolution in the UN, proposing four immediate changes for the transformation of the UN. “The 21st century demands changes that are only possible with a refounding of this organization,” said Chavez. “Mere reforms are not enough…”

"Proponemos que la sede de Naciones Unidas salga de un país que no es respetuoso con las resoluciones de la Asamblea"

Excelencias, amigas y amigos, muy buenas tardes:

El propósito original de esta reunión ha sido desvirtuado totalmente. Se nos ha impuesto como centro del debate un mal llamado proceso de reformas, que relega a un segundo plano lo más urgente, lo que los pueblos del mundo reclaman con urgencia, como lo es la adopción de medidas para enfrentar los verdaderos problemas que obstaculizan e impiden los esfuerzos de nuestros países por el desarrollo y por la vida.

Cinco años después de la Cumbre del Milenio, la cruda realidad es que la gran mayoría de las metas diseñadas, pese a que eran ya de por sí modestísimas, no serán alcanzadas.

Chavez propone refundar la ONU fuera de EE.UU.

NACIONES UNIDAS, 15 de septiembre.—El presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, declaró el jueves en la Cumbre Mundial para celebrar el LX aniversario de la ONU que la organización no sirve para nada y pidió que sea sacada de territorio estadounidense hacia una "ciudad internacional'' que está todavía por crearse, reportó AP.

Whiteness is, among much else, a bad idea

The History of a Bad Idea

David Roediger - author of The Wages of Whiteness and Towards the Abolition of Whiteness - comes from Rush Limbaugh's neck of the woods in downstate Illinois river country, but looks at his skin color quite differently.

In his 2002 book Colored White, the 52-year-old historian from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, notes that he hails from "that part of the Mississippi River which divides Missouri from Illinois ... the lone portion of the Mississippi to divide slavery from freedom."

Crossing the Rubicon: An Interview with Michael Ruppert

Most people I know have some intuitive sense that the stories told about the way the world works in our culture of daily "news" (and I use the term loosely) are suspect. The real stories about power and the ways power is exercised lie buried beneath the surface. But how deep, to quote The Matrix’s Morpheus, does this rabbit hole go? For those willing to crawl down the hole, U.S. investigative journalism has its own Morpheus, and his name is Michael Ruppert.

A UCLA political science honors graduate and former LAPD narcotics investigator, Ruppert is the editor/publisher of From the Wilderness (www.fromthewilderness.com), a monthly newsletter now read by more than 16,000 subscribers in forty countries, including forty Congressmen, both Houses’ intelligence committees, and professors at more than thirty universities around the world. He is also author of a new and startling book called Crossing the Rubicon, in which he draws on From the Wilderness’s seven years of research to tell a disturbing story about the way the world really works.

U.S. Military in Paraguay Prepares to "Spread Democracy"

Controversy is raging in Paraguay, where the U.S. military is conducting secretive operations. 500 U.S. troops arrived in the country on July 1st with planes, weapons and ammunition. Eyewitness reports prove that an airbase exists in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, which is 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia and may be utilized by the U.S. military. Officials in Paraguay claim the military operations are routine humanitarian efforts and deny that any plans are underway for a U.S. base. Yet human rights groups in the area are deeply worried. White House officials are using rhetoric about terrorist threats in the tri-border region (where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet) in order to build their case for military operations, in many ways reminiscent to the build up to the invasion of Iraq. (1) The tri-border area is home to the Guarani Aquifer, one of the world’s largest reserves of water. Near the Estigarribia airbase are Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America. Political analysts believe U.S. operations in Paraguay are part of a preventative war to control these natural resources and suppress social uprisings in Bolivia.

Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel commented on the situation in Paraguay, "Once the United States arrives, it takes it a long time to leave. And that really frightens me." (2)

You're an asshole

Video: Mr. Bush, Your an asshole: Flash presentation.

The Enablers

Four years ago, the United States was hit by a terrorist attack. Three days later, the U.S. Congress signed away the people's freedom, writing a blank check for tyranny to a ludicrous little man installed in office after the most dubious election in American history. Last week, the poisonous after-effects of this abject surrender took yet another sinister turn, as Bush factotums in the courts once again upheld the Leader's arbitrary power over the life and liberty of his subjects.

The joint House-Senate resolution of Sept. 14, 2001 -- approved by a combined vote of 518-1 -- gave President George W. Bush the most sweeping powers ever granted an American leader. Bush was authorized to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against any organization or individual that he alone declared was somehow connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. His arbitrary will would be the sole deciding factor. This timorous resolution was, in effect, a repeal of the Magna Carta: the nobles of the land giving back hard-won rights to a harsh, incompetent despot.

Las guerras mienten por Eduardo Galeano

« Pero el motivo... -indagó el señor Duval- Un hombre no mata por nada. -¿El motivo?- contestó Ellery, encogiéndose de hombros. -Usted ya conoce el motivo.» Ellery Queen. Aventuras en la Mansión de las Tinieblas.

Las guerras dicen que ocurren por nobles razones: la seguridad internacional, la dignidad nacional, la democracia, la libertad, el orden, el mandato de la civilización o la voluntad de Dios. Ninguna tiene la honestidad de confesar: «Yo mato para robar».

Time for a Truth & Justice Commission

What actually happened in New Orleans these past two weeks? We need to sort through the rumors and distortions. Perhaps we need our version of South Africa's Truth And Reconciliation Commission. Some way to sort through the many narratives and find a truth, and to find justice.

I spent yesterday inside the city of New Orleans, speaking to a few of the last holdouts in the 9th ward/ bywater neighborhood. Their stories paint a very different picture from what we've heard in the media. Instead of stories of gangs of criminals and police and soldiers keeping order, there were stories of collective action, everyone looking out for each other, communal responses.

The United States Becomes Its Own Worst Enemy

Since the 1970s the United States has become increasingly captive to consumeristic frenzy and religious zeal at home and to an arrogant and bloody militarism abroad. As we do so, has not the following description come to fit us as a people?

Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too narrow concept of social responsibiity, attachment to fictions and false values..., too great an attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism... .

Not all of us, just yet; but those words were written to describe the people of the eleven states of the "New South" that evolved after 1877. The quotation is from The Mind of the South (1940); its author was the Carolinian journalist W.J. Cash.

The New South was a toxic brew of institutionalized cruelty and systemic irrationalities, fueled by fear, greed, and hatred; only the worst of its social crimes was the encouragement and immunity given to the lynching of thousands of blacks after 1877.

Bush's Holy War on Nature

Hurricane Katrina showed us how difficult it has become to distinguish between natural disasters and man-made ones. First, the Army Corp of Engineers decides it can build a better river than Mother Nature and in the process deprives the delta of storm-absorbing wetlands and barrier islands while allowing the ground under New Orleans to subside into a suicidal bowl. Then a storm hits and... well, you know the rest of the story. The lesson is simple: we are embedded in natural systems and whether we acknowledge that or not can be a matter of life and death.

Elecciones internas en el PT: el partido ante el espejo

Querida Ana, esta noche/madrugada cayó por aquí una tormenta, perdona la expresión, “do c…”, rayos, truenos y agua sin fin; al lado de la Avenida 23 de Mayo, el ruido de la lluvia conseguía apagar el estruendo permanente del tráfico; un “toró” que dicen en algunas regiones del país. Pensé mucho en tí y, menos alegre y gracioso, un poco en la situación del país.

No sé muy bien, sin embargo, por dónde empezar para explicarte un poco la situación que vive Brasil en estos días, ya desde hace tres meses que iniciara la que pasará a la historia como la crisis del “mensalão” (algo así como sueldazo mensual). En realidad, hay dos temas diferentes, aunque mezclados. El primero, el “mensalão” en rigor, que es el del eventual pagamiento a diputados, aliados por cierto, para que votasen a favor de las propuestas del gobierno; el segundo, financiación ilegal de campañas electorales.

Meanwhile, in Iraq...Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches

For the last several days at least 6,000 US soldiers along with approximately 4,000 Iraqi soldiers (Read-members of the Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia Badr Army) were laying siege to the city of Tal-Afar, near Mosul in northern Iraq. It is estimated that 90% of the residents have left their homes because of the violence and destruction of the siege, as well as to avoid home raids and snipers.

The Fallujah model is being applied yet again, albeit on a smaller scale. I haven’t received any reports yet of biometrics being used (retina scans, finger printing, bar coding of human beings) like in Fallujah, but there are other striking similarities to the tactics used in November.

While the US military claims to have killed roughly 200 “terrorists” in the operation, reports from the ground state that most of the fighters inside the city had long since left to avoid direct confrontation with the overwhelming military force (a basic tenet of guerrilla warfare).

Ecuador Removes Controversial Foriegn Minister

The rumors that we have been hearing for some time now have been confirmed: Ecuador is going to remove its foreign secretary, Antonio Parra Gil. More precisely, Parra will be sent off to Madrid to switch places with Ecuador’s ambassador to Spain, Fracisco Carrión, who, according to President Alfredo Palacio, will “maintain the same nationalistic and sovereign policies of his predecessor, but with a less belligerent discourse.”

Tellingly, Palacio confirmed the switch to the media just as he headed off for his visit as president to the United States. The move is a blow to the Ecuadorian social movements, who had come to count on Parra as one of their few trusted allies in the government. The biggest effect will be likely be on Ecuador’s relationship with neighboring Colombia, especially in terms of one of the most controversial issues of the drug war in that country…

Asesinato de defensora de derechos humanos consterna a Brasil

El asesinato a tiros de una religiosa ligada a la lucha por la tierra consternó Brasil este fin de semana. El crimen ocurrió el sábado 12 de febrero, en Anapu, sudoeste de Pará. Exactamente tres días después que la monja hubo entregado las denuncias de amenazas de muerte, que sufre desde 1999, al titular de la Secretaría Especial de Derechos Humanos, ministro Nilmário Miranda; al vocero Agrario General, Gercino Filho, y a las autoridades del gobierno del Estado de Pará. Y sólo nueve días después de la instalación, en Pará, del primer grupo de trabajo estatal del Programa Nacional de Protección a los Defensores de Derechos Humanos, que apunta a garantizar el trabajo de estos agentes sociales.

Tomás Hirsch candidato único de la izquierda chilena

El candidato del Pacto Juntos Podemos Más, Tomás Hirsch, el lunes formalizó su candidatura a la presidencia de la República, completando de este modo la nómina de los candidatos presidenciables.

El candidato de la agrupación de izquierda excluida del parlamento, llegó hasta la sede del organismo electoral cerca de las 18:00 horas, y tras firmar ante el director del Servel, Juan Ignacio García, calificó su postulación como una candidatura “de la esperanza”.

Detective Story that Linked £1m Pinochet Cash to BAE

US investigators find 100 accounts linked to general; Secret payments listed to alleged front companies

Augusto Pinochet, the 89-year-old former strongman of Chile and alleged torturer and murderer, has frequently slipped his pursuers, pleading ill health or relying on protectors at home in the Chilean military. But now an unexpected nemesis is pursuing him, in the shape of his tax returns.

The dogged pursuit of his multimillion dollar fortune by a Chilean judge, Sergio Muñoz, culminated last month in the arrest of General Pinochet's wife and son in Santiago. The hunt has unearthed a sophisticated array of bank accounts and offshore hiding places. It has also left Britain's biggest arms company, BAE, facing many questions in what may prove one of the biggest scandals to hit an already scandal-prone company.

BATHroom break

Either George W. Bush needs a potty break and doesn't know when to capitalize or when to use a question mark, or he's sending secret coded messages to Condi about needing a bath.

The Graft Goes On

Miss Molly:

Some of you may have heard me observe a time or two—going back to when George W. was still governor of Texas—that the trouble with the guy is that while he is good at politics, he stinks at governance. It bores him, he’s not interested, he thinks government is bad to begin with and everything would be done better if it were contracted out to corporations.
We can now safely assert that W. has stacked much of the federal government with people like himself. And what you get when you put people in charge of government who don’t believe in government and who are not interested in running it well is … what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

Many a time in the past six years I have bit my tongue so I wouldn’t annoy people with the always obnoxious observation, “I told you so.” But, dammit it all to hell, I did tell you, and I’ve been telling you since 1994, and I am so sick of this man and everything he represents—all the sleazy, smug, self-righteous graft and corruption and “Christian” moralizing and cynicism and tax cuts for all his smug, rich buddies.

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.

FuneralGate - Corpse-Abusing Company Gets FEMA Contract

A funeral services company which recently learned that one of its subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses, and dumped bodies into mass graves.

Moreover, the company paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought to expose that two members of the Texas funeral commission, the agency which regulates the funeral industry, were actually employees of the company they were supposed to monitor--an obvious conflict-of-interest.
In the civil matter, which took place at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida, the plaintiff's attorney said that SCI secretly broke into and opened burial vaults and dumped remains in a wooded area where the remains may have been consumed by wild animals.

"Call Me Bushtail..." Bush, God and Katrina

In literature, God has sent warnings. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville's sea saga, Captain Ahab refused to recognize God's limits. The white whale (God's creature?) warns Ahab in a first encounter by chewing off the captain's leg. Instead of respecting this admonition, the commander of the commercial whaling vessel sought revenge domination over nature, in the form of a large animal. Ahab moved decisively to assert domination over the natural order.

In Life, George Bush froze unscripted-when world-shaking issues fell onto his morally weak shoulders. Suffering and death confound him. Perhaps Barbara traumatized the seven year old W when little sister died of leukemia? The day after the funeral, the Bushes played a round of golf the proper set dealing with death. Barbara, according to Dr. Justin Frank, had trouble connecting emotionally with her son.

Speculators Rushing In as the Water Recedes

A New Orleans land rush that "raises the question of what sort of housing -- if any -- will be available to those without a six-figure salary,"

Would-be home buyers are betting New Orleans will be a boomtown. And many of the city's poorest residents could end up being forced out.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Brandy Farris is house hunting in New Orleans.

The real estate agent has $10 million in the bank, wired by an investor who has instructed her to scoop up houses — any houses. "Flooding no problem," Farris' newspaper ads advise.

Her backer is a Miami businessman who specializes in buying storm-ravaged property at a deep discount, something that has paid dividends in hurricane-prone Florida. But he may have a harder time finding bargains this time around.

In some ways, Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken a vibrant real estate market and made it hotter. Large sections of the city are underwater, but that's only increasing the demand for dry houses. And in flooded areas, speculators are trying to buy properties on the cheap, hoping that the redevelopment of New Orleans will start a boom.

Mahathir calls US, UK terrorist nations

US and British pilots whose bombs killed Iraqi civilians were murderers, and actions taken by those two countries during the invasion and occupation of Iraq amounted to terrorism, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has said.

Several British and US diplomats walked out in protest of Mahathir's broadside against their countries in a speech at a national conference in Kuala Lumpur on human rights on Friday.

After hurricane, Cheney's office diverted power crews from hospitals to oil pipeline

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.

That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.

Bolton's disruptive agenda all too obvious

Since his recess appointment by President Bush to represent the United States at the United Nations, John Bolton has proceeded to live up to the hubris of his previous comments:

"There's no such thing as the United Nations." If U.N. headquarters in New York "lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a difference." And there was his threat, while undersecretary of state in 2002, to withhold U.S. dues if the U.N. didn't fire Jose Bustani, director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Bustani wanted the authority to investigate violations -- with Iraq as the first target. Had Bustani prevailed, Bush's constant refrain about WMD in Iraq would have been proved false, leaving his utopian adventure without its main rationale.

El sabotaje de EEUU en la ONU posterga el compromiso de reducir la pobreza mundial

El pastel de cumpleaños para la Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU) llegó algo apachurrado y, aunque bien decorado por fuera, está algo hueco por dentro. En el 60 aniversario, no ofrece mucho que celebrar la gran declaración que se negocia para la Cumbre Mundial -la reunión más grande de jefes de Estado en la historia-, que resolvería los problemas más graves del mundo y de esta institución.

Entre el sabotaje de último momento de Estados Unidos y la falta de unidad de los países del mundo en respuesta a demandas de Washington, la declaración del compromiso mundial para reducir pobreza y enfermedad, promover el desarrollo y derechos humanos, fortalecer la seguridad mundial y reformar la ONU, que se había negociado durante casi un año, quedó diluido y remite al futuro toda una gama de asuntos clave que se suponía serían acordados aquí y ahora.

The St. Patrick Four: The feds confront the Anti-War Movement

On September 19 the first federal conspiracy trial of civilian war resisters to the US invasion of Iraq will take place in Binghamton, New York, a declining and decaying city in upstate New York, 3 hours northwest of New York City. This is the second trial of the “St Patrick Four” – they were acquitted a year earlier by a jury in Ithaca, New York by a 9 to 3 vote in which the presiding Judge David Peeble conceded that the four had represented themselves “probably better than some of the attorneys that practice in this court.”

The trial of the St. Pat Four has national significance because it raises several fundamental issues regarding constitutional freedoms and the Bush-Gonzalez ongoing campaign to silence and intimidate dissent and public expressions of opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The trial of the St. Pat Four will establish whether the Federal Government can jail dissenters engaging in civil disobedience for up to six years and fine them up to $250,000 on feckless charges of “conspiracy to impede an officer of the United States by threat, intimidation or force”. Even more ominous, in terms of the procedures for a fair trial, the senior US District Judge for Northern New York, Thomas McAvoy, has ruled that the defendants cannot discuss the reasons and motivation for their action. According to McAvoy, “This court offers no opinion on the war in Iraq as it is entirely irrelevant to this matter…assuming an illegal war, it does not provide a justification for violating the criminal laws of the United States.”

Sir, No Sir! An Interview with David Zeiger

The Oleo Strut was a coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, from 1968 to 1972. Like its namesake, a shock absorber in helicopter landing gear, the Oleo Strut’s purpose was to help GIs land softly. Upon returning from Vietnam to Fort Hood, shell-shocked soldiers found solace amongst the Strut’s regulars, mostly fellow soldiers and a few civilian sympathizers. But it didn’t take long before shell shock turned into anger, and that anger into action. The GIs turned the Oleo Strut into one of Texas’s anti-war headquarters, publishing an underground anti-war newspaper, organizing boycotts, setting up a legal office, and leading peace marches.

Hurricane Katrina and Climate Justice

For nearly five years George Bush has infuriated much of the world by refusing to take action on global warming. Instead, he has called for more study. In a way, he got what he wanted with Hurricane Katrina.

One of the strongest storms on record, Katrina provided an epic and horrific laboratory for observing what happens when corporations and consumers pump more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The world’s top climate scientists have long documented the effects of burning fossil fuels--oil, coal and gas-- and predicted dire consequences for the world’s climate, including increasingly severe and frequent storms and floods.

The Great American Jobs Scam

Lurking within the records of most cities and states in America there lies a scandal. A tax scandal. A jobs scandal. A corporate and political scandal.

It's the Great American Jobs Scam: an intentionally constructed system that enables corporations to exact huge taxpayer subsidies by promising quality jobs - and then lets them fail to deliver. The other benefit often promised - higher tax revenues - often proves false or exaggerated as well.
Take for example: New York City, which must hold the record for job blackmail, though it is hardly alone. One study of 80 companies that had received "retention" subsidies from the Big Apple found that at least 39 had later announced major layoffs, or they had entered into large-scale mergers or put themselves up for sale - events that usually trigger mass layoffs. A detailed analysis of 10 subsidized companies found they had a total loss of more than 3,000 jobs.

Expulsion is Transfer: The Colonial Logic of Bush's Response to New Orleans

It’s not so much that the Emperor has no clothes but that his clothes, under the black sky, are shining white, with many thousands gone, enabled deliberately by his white imperial rule. I believe this to be the only honest, rational conclusion to draw from all the evidence on the ground in New Orleans.

A lot of the shock and awe being expressed in the mainstream media over the Bush administration’s four days of willful indifference toward the suffering of Black people of New Orleans, those who either did not or could not leave, is disingenuous. For example, Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley’s comment that he was “shocked” to hear that Bush wanted no part of a substantial material aid package he had offered on Sunday, one day before the landing of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, is a salient fragment of the noxious whole.

Judith Miller and Jayson Blair

In 2003 the New York Times faced a major scandal involving one of its reporters, Jayson Blair. Blair was caught with his pants down, so to speak. He plagiarized the work of other reporters, quoted people he had never contacted, and claimed to be in places he never visited.

The Times called the Blair mess "a low point in the 152-year history of the paper." It is indeed very bad if a reporter behaves more like a novelist, but it always seemed to me that the Times protested a little too much in the Blair case. While the Times is said to be the newspaper of record, it has had many low moments in its history.

The Times told Martin Luther King to shut up and mind his own business when he dared to speak out against the war in Vietnam. Dr. Wen Ho Lee went to jail because of the Times’ hyperventilation, only to be cleared of any wrongdoing. Tons of newsprint went into reporting the Whitewater non-scandal.

The Internationally Recognized Rights of the 'Internally Displaced'

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the debate is already raging on how to deal with those displaced by the disaster and whether to rebuild New Orleans and other coastal communities. Competing interests combined with poor planning and a disjointed response from public and private agencies have created confusion about priorities, funding and other crucial details. It is imperative that a human rights and humanitarian law framework be applied to these discussions and form the basis for all future action.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement provide just such a framework. The principles identify the internationally recognized rights and guarantees of people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and communities due to a number of factors, including natural disaster. According to this set of principles, those who have been displaced from their homes but not crossed international borders are classified as “internally displaced persons,” not “refugees” or “evacuees.” This is not a mere question of semantics, but an essential definition that establishes the obligations that government has to protect and defend the rights of the Gulf Coast residents who have been dispersed across the country.

Good morning Rolling Stones

SWEET NEO CON
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

You call yourself a Christian
I think that you're a hypocrite
You say you are a patriot
I think that you're a crock of shit

And listen now, the gasoline
I drink it every day
But it's getting very pricey
And who is going to pay

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con.... Yeah

It's liberty for all
'Cause democracy's our style
Unless you are against us
Then it's prison without trial

But one thing that is certain
Life is good at Haliburton
If you're really so astute
You should invest at Brown & Root.... Yeah

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con
If you turn out right
I'll eat my hat tonight

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah....

It's getting very scary
Yes, I'm frightened out of my wits
There's bombers in my bedroom
Yeah and it's giving me the shits

We must have lots more bases
To protect us from our foes
Who needs these foolish friendships
We're going it alone

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con
Where's the money gone
In the Pentagon

Yeah ha ha ha
Yeah, well, well

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Neo con

No War But Class War!

Look upon the city of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast now, and you see the true face of capitalism. Look upon the tens of thousands of people who were abandoned, displaced, and then even disparaged by our government and its media minions for being trapped there by poverty, age, youth, or disability. They lived for days on end with no food, water, or shelter. They lived amidst corpses and raw sewage, seeing the ill and elderly die with nothing but the odd blanket or sheet with which to cover their bodies, watching babies being born with only contaminated water in which to wash their tiny bodies, and being promised that help would come tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until tomorrow never came for thousands.

What you see, in the majority of those people, is the productive labor force that kept that city alive before Hurricane Katrina. You see the people who rang up the sales of goods they could never, in their wildest dreams, afford, who waited and bussed tables, cleaned houses, cared for the children of the wealthy, and generally did all the work of a service industry that keeps a tourist city alive. These are the people whose work produced the wealth of those who were able to leave the city in safety. When, after days without food, water, or adequate shelter, they attempted to appropriate the goods they had generated the capital to produce, property abandoned by those whom they had supported by their labor, they were shot at, vilified, and defined as criminals

Galloway Does Boston Proud

“We who live in the United States or Britain, only have to answer one question, do we stand with the occupier, or with those who are resisting colonial occupation.”

“The swamp of hatred that our policies have created in the Muslim world nourish the mutation of hatred that believes killing innocent people in New York or London is somehow a blow against those responsible in our countries for those policies. All we have done be invading and occupying Iraq is increase the number of people who hate us and the intensity with which they hate us.”

“The US and Britain’s unquestioning support for the State of Israel is the flaw that lies at the heart of the West’s attitude toward the Muslim world.”

Standing ovation from 400 people.

The Man Beneath The Hood Speaks Out: "They tortured me, they humiliated me"

An interview with Shalal el Kaissi, who has become a symbol of U.S. torture .

"They tortured me, they humiliated me, they have destroyed me inside. I want that what has happened to me never happens again, that everyone knows what those months in Abu Ghraib were like. This is my new life: to denounce that which is happening in the Iraqi prisons, to defend the rights of those who are inside of them”. Former prisoner number 151716 of the prison of shame speaks. The man who has been recognised in one of the photo-symbols of the violence of Abu Ghraib: the hooded prisoner, standing balanced on a cardboard box, his shoulders to the wall, with his arms opened and the fingers of his hands connected to electrical wires.

Ali Shalal el Kaissi, 42 years old, was arrested in October of 2003 in a car park near the mosque of El Amariyah and was imprisoned with the accusation of being part of the guerrilla movement. In the disgusting jargon of his torturers, he was “Clawman”, due to a noticeable burn mark on his hand. He was released January of 2004 and, several months later, founded together with another 12 persons, “The association of the victims of American occupation prisons".

NEW ORLEANS AREA BIOWEAPONS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH LABS JEOPARDIZED BY KATRINA

NEW ORLEANS AREA BIOWEAPONS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH LABS JEOPARDIZED BY KATRINA

Tulane’s National Primate Research Center Reports No Release of Nearly 5,000 Test Monkeys or Disease Agents – Other NOLA Defense or Research Projects Involve HIV, SIV, SARS, Herpes-B, Anthrax, Botulism, Measles, West Nile and Mousepox

No Confirmed Information on Other NOLA Level-3 Labs Involved in Bioweapons Research – At Least One Lab Reportedly Compromised.

September 13, 2005 0800 PST (FTW) – Prior to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina on August 29th, the greater New Orleans area was a significant hub of infectious disease and biological weapons research. At least five Level-3 biolabs were located either in New Orleans or in its nearby suburb of Covington. Level-4 is the only higher containment level and is used primarily for weapons research on hemorrhagic fevers and other viral agents. Although there were many causes for alarm with Katrina, the biggest initial worry for FTW had been the status of nearly 5,000 monkeys (kept outdoors behind barbed wire) used in infectious disease research at the Tulane University National Primate Center.

National Institutes of Health spokesperson Ann Puderbaugh told FTW, “The National Primate Research Center at Tulane came through the storm just fine. There were no injured or escaped animals and there was no release of any biological agents due to other causes.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported very little damage and no release of agents at any of its monitored facilities. CDC maintains a Select Agent Release Program and had issued warnings prior to Katrina’s landfall and had subsequently posted a request for any labs compromised to immediately notify them. CDC spokesman Von Roebuck told FTW, as far as the Select Agent program was concerned, “We made an immediate outreach to all of these laboratories. The reports back were that there had been little or no damage. No loss of or release of any agent occurred and there is currently security in place at all of our facilities.”

American Violence in Iraq: Necrophilia or Savagery? Part 4: Obedience, Defiance, and Conscience

On the cover of its April 1994 issue, The World & I magazine printed the following question: “How violent is America?” On that occasion, the magazine was referring to US domestic violence.

On the index page, the editors expanded on the argument by placing under that same question the following introduction: “More people died in gunfire in the United States during the past four years than were killed in Vietnam War. Finally, Americans have had enough. But how effective are the proposed solutions?”

More revealingly, on page 20, the magazine’s editor, Morton A. Kaplan, commenced the special essay on the topic by stating, “Violence seems to rule America…

News From Behind The Facade by John Pilger

When I lived in the United States in the late 1960s, my home was often New Orleans, in a friend's rambling grey clapboard house that stood in a section of the city where civil rights campaigners had taken refuge from the violence of the Deep South. New Orleans was said to be cosmopolitan; it was also sinister and murderous. We were protected by the then District Attorney, Jim Garrison, a liberal maverick whose investigations into the assassination of John Kennedy were to make powerful enemies behind The Facade.

The Facade was how we described the dividing line between the America of real life -- of a poverty so profound that slavery was still a presence and a rapacious state power that waged war against its own citizens, as it did against black and brown-skinned people in faraway countries -- and the America that spawned the greed of corporatism and invented public relations as a means of social control; the "American Dream" and the "American Way of Life" began as advertising slogans.

Tal Afar: Crackdown in the Sunni Heartland

The siege of Tal Afar follows a familiar pattern of brutal American incursions into densely populated areas under the pretense of fighting terrorism. It is a ritual that is repeated endlessly despite the dismal results. The Pentagon seems to prefer these grand displays of military strength to anything that might produce a political solution. It brings to mind the old saw, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again: expecting a different result.” This appears to be the guiding principle of the Defense Department with Tal Afar serving as the most recent example.

In the present case, a city of 250,000 has been almost entirely evacuated following weeks of artillery bombardment, aerial bombing raids, downed power lines and water systems, and house-to-house searches.

Nicaragua : Marcha contra el CAFTA

Los sectores populares y las organizaciones de todo el país afínes al Frente Sandinista y agrupadas en la Coordinadora Social (la otra cara de la sociedad civil que no se reconoce en la Coordinadora Civíl), han marchado por las calles de Managua pidiendoles a los diputados que no ratifiquen el Tratado de libre comercio entre Estados Unidos y Centroamerica-República Dominicana (Tlc-Cafta).

Actualmente el Cafta ya ha sido aprobado por los Parlamentos de El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, República Dominicana y Estados Unidos (estos últimos con una reducida mayoría de 2 votos en la Cámara), mientras que todavía resisten Costa Rica y Nicaragua.

Diferente es la situación en estos dos países.

Speaking Out Against War

BRUNSWICK, Maine - Appearances are deceiving in the case of Kathy Kelly.
The high-profile peace activist visited Brunswick to protest the weekend's air show and promote her eternal message of peace; but rummaging through luggage in her hosts' car after returning from Peaks Island, Kelly looked more like a tourist stretching the last days of summer.

With her characteristically peaceful and almost otherworldly expression, Kelly hardly looks like an outraged, demanding poster-child for extremist government protests, as some who don't hold her views have portrayed her.


A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
Kathy Kelly, founder of Voices in the Wilderness, enjoys some quiet moments at a Brunswick home Monday afternoon following a weekend of speaking engagements throughout the Mid-coast region about her peacemaking activities in Iraq and elsewhere. Kelly spoke Monday night at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. (Rachel Ganong / The Times Record)
Yet, no one can deny that this serene woman stirs things up. Kelly has made 26 trips to Iraq, repeatedly defying U.S. sanctions. She also landed herself in federal prison three times for her efforts to promote peace by challenging the U.S. war machine.

Iraq Slams U.S. Detentions, Immunity for Troops

Earlier this week, Iraqi Justice Minister Abdul Hussein Shandal quite reasonably asserted “No citizen should be arrested without a court order.” But in the gleaming democracy that is Iraq, a foreign military occupying force detains thousands of Iraqis indefinitely and without charge, and its troops are immune from Iraqi law.

"No War has Ever Been Declared by the People" Eugene V. Debs and the Legacy of Dissent

Eighty-seven years ago-on September 14, 1918- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I.

Debs was one of the most prominent labor organizers and political activists of his time. He was also nominated as the Socialist Party's candidate for president five times. His voting tallies over his first four campaigns effectively illustrate the remarkable growth of the party during that volatile time period:

1900: 94,768
1904: 402,400
1908: 402,820
1912: 897,011

America's entrance into World War I, however, provoked a tightening of civil liberties, culminating with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Act in June 1917. This totalitarian salvo read in part: "Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both."

First Lady Becomes President's Defender

WASHINGTON - Laura Bush is reprising her role as her husband's first defender, making several trips to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast as President Bush's approval ratings sink to their lowest level yet.

Mrs. Bush is highlighting the positive that has come out of the storm, telling the stories of strangers helping one another in a time of tragedy.

Mrs. Bush said Tuesday that much more human good than bad has come from the disaster, despite what people see on TV. She said the evacuees she has met in her three trips to the Gulf Coast are hopeful and thankful that they don't have to start from rock bottom because of the donations and the kindness of strangers.

Local Neighborhood Cops as Militarized Thugs

You’d think the Mexican military had invaded New Orleans. Well, they have, but that’s beside the point. You’d think thousands of well-armed thugs are loose on the streets, killing and terrorizing the inhabitants, thus the need for cops garbed in cammies, bullet-proof vests, helmets with automatic weapons. Point is, there is absolutely no need for militarized cops on the streets of New Orleans. As these photos demonstrate, the cops are pretending to be little John Rambos, wearing black t-shirts emblazoned with special forces-like insignias, tromping around frightening law-abiding citizens, attacking old ladies, and confiscating legal guns from citizens who believe the Second Amendment means what it says. Almost as disgusting as this militarization of the police is the fawning attitude of the corporate media, who make excuses for this behavior. Last night, on MSNBC, some airhead said he has to hand it to the police for the tough job they have (breaking down doors, screaming obscenities at frightened residents, stealing guns), for instance killing stray dogs left behind, family pets condemned to death. It is obvious the enemy is not roving gangs of thugs but the remaining residents of New Orleans. New Orleans is the paradigm of what America will soon be: a militarized police state where the Constitution is a dead letter and the citizenry is considered the enemy.

Senate Republicans Kill Independent Katrina Response Investigation

Senate Republicans Kill Independent Katrina Response Investigation

by DavidNYC
Wed Sep 14th, 2005 at 13:09:57 PDT

Bastards. Not that I'm surprised - but I'm always angry. Every Republican but LA's Vitter voted "no" (he didn't vote at all) - including that scumbag alleged moderate Chaffee. Every Dem plus Jeffords voted "yes." (Corzine, presumably, was absent.)

Once again, the Peter Pan Syndrome - or should I say Tinkerbell Syndrome - kicks in for the GOP. When something goes wrong, they don't even want to know about it. Just clap harder, assholes.

Another 9-11 shattered Chile in 1973

Sunday we solemnly observe the fourth anniversary of the catastrophe that unexpectedly turned the World Trade Center and the Pentagon into the mouth of hell in all its fury. It was a sunny Tuesday morning when calamity struck us with no warning. Not just a national or international calamity but a civilizational calamity. 9-11 has now become more or less a watershed: every event is either pre-9-11 or post-9-11.

Mostly forgotten is the fact that 9-11 also happens to be the anniversary of another tragic event that shook the world 32 years ago. The scene of the tragedy was Palacio de La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, in the Pacific Coast of South America.

Again it was a bloody Tuesday. Shortly after 2 p.m., Capt. Roberto Garrido of the Chilean army leading an infantry patrol burst into the presidential palace La Moneda facing a group of civilians braced to defend themselves with semiautomatic guns. The patrol captain opened fire wounding President Salvadore Allende Gossens. More machine-gun fire from the patrol. Allende was riddled with bullets and he slumped back dead. General Palacios Ruhman, the commander of the attack rushed to the telephone and reported to army chief Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte: Mission accomplished. Moneda taken. President dead.

Chavez Accuses U.S. Government of Interfering with Trip to UN Meeting

Caracas, Venezuela, September 13, 2005—President Chavez said that the U.S. government is interfering with his trip to participate in the opening of the 60th UN General Assembly in New York City, which begins today. He said that the U.S. embassy in Venezuela has denied visas to many members of his support team.

“Look at what has happened. They have denied visas to my security team. I receive death threats from there and they deny visas to my closest security team that has been with me all these years,” said Chavez yesterday evening, during an event with representatives of the Chinese government. Among those that Chavez said that did not receive a visa is the head of security of the president and his medical team.

Nueva Orleáns perderá su alma cuando sea reconstruida, dice el poeta Andrei Codrescu

Nueva Orleáns, 13 de septiembre. El puerto de Nueva Orleáns, el primero y más activo económicamente de Estados Unidos en la costa del Golfo de México, comienza a volver a la vida mientras el primer buque con ayuda que llega desde el paso de Katrina, hace más de dos semanas, fue anclado y vaciado.

La llegada de café, madera, bobinas de acero y otras materias de Centro y Sur América fue visto por economistas y oficiales del gobierno como signo positivo de que el amplio impacto económico de la tormenta y sus consecuencias son lo suficientemente pequeñas para evitar una mayor recesión o que se agiten los mercados mundiales.

Surge división en la OTA

Berlín.- Una nueva y peligrosa división en el seno de la OTAN entre Alemania y Estados Unidos comenzó a nacer ayer en Berlín, cuando el gobierno germano, apoyado por París y Ankara, se opuso a los planes militares de Washington, que desea involucrar a la Fuerza de Asistencia a la Seguridad de Afganistán (ISAF) que dirige la OTAN, en operaciones de combate antiterrorista en ese país.

Bush Betrays Poor Women Again

This week’s United Nations World Summit—originally intended to assess governments’ progress on pledges to reduce poverty and promote development by 2015—is in danger of being derailed by the United States. The meeting itself is proceeding with much fanfare, but the United States is working to ensure that its outcome will do little to alleviate the suffering and human rights violations experienced by the world’s poorest people—most of them women and their children.

Two weeks before the Summit, John Bolton—recently appointed by Bush to the post of UN Ambassador despite his notorious hostility to the UN—put forward his own draft of the outcome document for the Summit. Bolton made a whopping 750 changes to the UN draft of the document, which has been under negotiation for more than six months. His revisions block potential progress on issues that are critical to everyone in the world, including development, nuclear disarmament, and global warming. Bolton even deleted all mention of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—the internationally agreed-upon framework for reducing poverty—even though evaluating the MDGs was supposed to be the main purpose of the Summit.

Even before the dying is over - The corporate vultures move in

Emperor George has no clothes. Hurricane Katrina has exposed his administration and its ruthless indifference to the needs of a population exploited by class, race and poverty.

The government has lost its credibility because of the too-little, too-late response to the colossal catastrophe in New Orleans and the Gulf states. The hurricane has brought home death and destruction, hun ger and disease such as wars of imperialist conquest have brought to the world’s peoples—Iraq and Afghanistan, foremost.

Statistics have now taken on a human face. The contrast—stark and indisput able—is between a government indistinguishable from the empire of high finance and a Black community dispossessed and poor, now more than ever homeless and jobless. The tragic events in the Gulf states are a brutal reflection of a racist and class virus, institutionalized and national.

Cuba reveals how UN summit document was distorted under pressure from the United States

UNITED NATIONS—Cuba has revealed irregularities and a lack of transparency in the negotiating process for the approved document to be submitted to a summit of heads of state and government here that is beginning at the close of this edition, Prensa Latina reports.

Abelardo Moreno, deputy foreign minister, affirmed during the closing of the 59th Session of the UN General Assembly that the document contains omissions and distortions of issues previously agreed upon or which do not appear, and that this is the result of pressure from the United States.

Bush's hacks

THE SENATE confirmation hearings of John Roberts are in the eye of a perfect storm of American hypocrisy. It is largely assumed that Roberts will be confirmed despite his animus for affirmative action for people of color. In 1981 as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, he wrote that affirmative action ''required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates."

Such sentiments will not sink his chances for the high court, not in a nation where affirmative action of inadequately prepared white men is so rampant that we let them manage our two worst disasters.

The Unjust Detention of Jose Padilla

Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested in Chicago in May 2002, has been held more than three years in a Navy brig without charge. The truth of the allegations against him - that he planned to commit acts of terrorism -- has never been tested in court.

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Padilla's detention, reversing a lower court decision that had said that Padilla should be either charged or released. Relying on the Supreme Court's 2004 ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld -- a case involving Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan -- the Fourth Circuit found that Congress had authorized Padilla's detention by passing a joint resolution on the use of military force in Afghanistan.

Roberts For Life???

Just four days before the Bush administration named John G. Roberts Jr. to fill retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the District of Columbia federal appeals court decided a case called Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld. In a crucial victory for the administration, the court upheld President Bush's creation of special military tribunals for trials of alleged terrorists and denied them the protection of the Geneva Convention. Roberts was one of the judges who decided that case, but he should have recused himself.

Nova Orleães, Iraque

Nos últimos quatro anos assisti nos EUA a dois acontecimentos gravíssimos, causadores de muita morte e destruição, um deles provocado por mão humana — o ataque às Torres Gémeas —o outro, natural —o furacão Katrina, que acaba de destruir Nova Orleães. Para além da dimensão das tragédias, estes dois acontecimentos não parecem ter nada em comum. Mas as aparências iludem. Em primeiro lugar, ambos revelam, cada um a seu modo, as enormes fragilidades da segurança interna do pais mais rico e poderoso do mundo. Ao contrário do que se tem dito, ambos os acontecimentos foram previstos, e previstos com detalhe. Os relatórios secretos da CIA vinham a pontando para a iminência de um ataque dramático a Nova Iorque por parte da Al Qaeda, usando a aviação civil. Do mesmo modo, são muitos os relatórios de várias agências de protecção civil que nos últimos anos chamaram a atenção para a necessidade de reforçar os diques de Nova Orleães, evitar a erosão dos pântanos e preparar acções de evacuação em grande escala. Em ambos os casos, o governo não levou a sério os alertas. No caso de Nova Orleães, a imprevidência foi particularmente grave, uma vez que, ainda no ano passado, o governo reduziu em cerca de 50% o orçamento do Corpo de Engenheiros encarregado das infra-estruturas de protecção da cidade.

¡Pobres del mundo, uníos!

El filósofo argentino Enrique Dussel ya enseñó que sólo hay un presupuesto ético universal: la vida del pobre. Él dice que este debe ser el parámetro para “surear” (orientar hacia el sur) cualquiera de nuestras acciones. El pobre, el caído, el oprimido, el masacrado, el excluido de la vida digna. Para Dussel, la víctima es real, y necesita del gesto ético. Eso vale tanto para quien vive en Florianópolis cuanto para los que viven en Malasia o Siberia. El pobre, dice Dussel, está perdido y sólo en el dolor. Necesita que las manos se extiendan y lo amparen, no como un gesto para aliviar la conciencia burguesa, sino como un compromiso real, verdadero.

El grito ético de Dussel parafrasea otro, del siglo XIX, cuando Marx y Engels proclamaron, en los albores del capitalismo: “trabajadores del mundo uníos”. Hoy, en el 2005, el grito que se hace necesario es: “pobres de todo el mundo uníos”. Y cualquiera que vea televisión sabe el motivo. La tragedia en Nueva Orleáns desveló al mundo cuánto los ricos y poderosos están incómodos con los pobres. Ningún discurso puede ser más contundente como la acción que fue practicada en aquella ciudad de mayoría negra. Amenazada por el huracán, el gobierno estadounidense lanzó el aviso de alerta para sus iguales: los blancos y ricos. “Sálvese quién pueda”, decían los mensajes oficiales. Quién tuvo coche y dinero para salir de la ciudad, se fue. Los pobres, los desvalidos, los desheredados, sin dinero y sin ticket de avión, tuvieron que quedarse. Y allí estuvieron abandonados a las aguas, a la enfermedad, a la muerte. Los que sobrevivieron, ahora son vistos como un “obstáculo problemático” en la vida feliz de Texas.

The Reconstruction of New Oraq

"At times it is hard to ignore the comparisons between Baghdad (where I was less than a month ago and have spent more of the last two years) and New Orleans: The anarchy, the looting, some of it purely for survival, some of it purely opportunistic. We watched a flatbed truck drive by, a man on the back with an M-16 looking up on the roofs for snipers, as is common in Iraq. Private security contractors were stationed outside the Royal St. Charles Hotel; when asked if things were getting pretty wild around the area, one of them replied, ‘Nope. It's pretty Green Zone here.'" (David Enders, Surviving New Orleans, Mother Jones on-line)

FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.

On Eve of World Summit, Hurricane Bolton Threatens to Wreak Havoc on the Global Poor

One of the truly heart-warming reactions to the suffering wrought by Hurricane Katrina is the response from the international community. The Red Cross received thousands of donations from individual foreigners—rich and poor—whose hearts went out to the victims. The governments of over 60 nations offered everything from helicopters, ships, water pumps and generators to doctors, divers and civil engineers. Poor countries devastated by last year’s tsunami have sent financial contributions. Governments at odds with the Bush administration—Cuba, Venezuela and Iran—offered doctors, medicines and cheap oil. The international response has been so overwhelming that the United Nations has placed personnel in the Hurricane Operations Center of the US Agency for International Development to help coordinate the aid.

Unbeknownst to the US public, however, at the very time impoverished Americans are being showered with support from the world community, the Bush administration’s newly appointed UN ambassador, John Bolton, has been waging an all-out attack on the global poor.

Hurricane Looting Not Over Yet by Jesse Jackson

The victims have been dispersed to states across the country. Many still sleep on cots in arenas, desperately trying to locate family members separated in the furies of Katrina. They are struggling with a staggering psychological toll -- destruction of homes, loss of jobs, suffering, abandonment, displacement to a new city, prospects unclear, past literally under water.

But while the victims are simply trying to get their bearings, the barracudas are circling. Naomi Klein, who witnessed this in Iraq, calls it "disaster capitalism." Congress has appropriated $62 billion already. Hundreds of billions more will be spent on reclaiming the Gulf Coast, rebuilding and relocation. The feeding frenzy has begun.

Already Halliburton is on hand with a no-bid contract for reconstruction. Fluor, Bechtel, the Shaw Group -- Republican-linked firms -- are lining up for contracts. Lobbyists like Joe Allbaugh, close friend of George Bush, and James Lee Witt, close friend of Bill Clinton -- both former heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- are advising their corporate clients to get teams on the scene. Normal rules of contracting and competition are being waived in the emergency. Big bucks are on the table. It is a time to be wired politically.

Colin Powell Being Colin Powell

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is pinning the blame for his false Iraq testimony before the United Nations in 2003 not on his superiors in the Bush administration nor on ex-CIA director George Tenet – but “on some people in the intelligence community” at lower levels.

In his first extensive interview since his resignation early this year, Powell told ABC News that his reputation has suffered because his assurances about Iraq’s supposed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons proved false. To critics, the interview is just the latest example of Powell's lifetime of political opportunism.

No Contest - Real Questions for Judge Roberts by Ralph Nader

With the proper media focus on the horrors of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent preventable destruction by flooding of lives, hopes and jobs, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week on the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States will be fighting for public attention.

That is too bad. Supreme Court nominations are a rare opportunity for millions of Americans to watch, learn and converse about what the Court, the Constitution and the Justices mean for their way of life, their freedoms and their livelihoods.
The expected alignments, called left and right by the press, are hard at work opposing and supporting the nominee.

New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown

The war has come home to America, right here, right now and so have myriad questions so disturbing that most Americans, even if they know what the questions are, are terrified to ask:

Why is Blackwater USA, the principal mercenary force outsourced by the Pentagon to fight in Iraq, now patrolling the streets of New Orleans?

Why the disgraceful, ghastly slowness of response by the federal government to the Katrina disaster? Why FEMA’s destruction of communication lines and implacable refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into the city? (http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/, September 6)

Why have reconstruction and clean-up contracts conveniently fallen, with perfect timing, to Halliburton and Bechtel, the two U.S. corporations most infamous for their expertise in rebuilding Iraq and worldwide whatever the U.S. military has blown up?

Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories of FEMA’s “gutting” by the federal government as the agency became part of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some sort of altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only it had been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMA’s obstruction of assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and several European nations, but from humanitarian organizations inside the United States is mindboggling. For a complete list of efforts blocked by FEMA see: http://www.rense.com/general67/femwont.htm

The Lethal Dinner - Who Murdered Arafat?

Last week the Haaretz headline screamed: "Doctors: Arafat died of AIDS or poisoning". AIDS appeared in first place.

For dozens of years, the Israeli media has conducted, with government inspiration, a concentrated campaign against the Palestinian leader (with the sole exception of Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine I edited). Millions of words of hatred and demonization were poured on him, more than on any other person of his generation. If somebody thought that this would end after his death, he was mistaken. This article, signed by Avi Isasharof and Amos Harel, is a direct continuation of this smear campaign.

The key word is, of course, "Aids". Throughout the long article there is no trace of proof for this allegation. The reporters quote "sources in the Israeli security establishment". They also quote Israeli doctors "who heard from French doctors" - an original method for medical diagnosis. A respected Israeli professor even found conclusive proof: it was not published that Arafat had undergone an Aids test. True, a Tunisian medical team did test him in Ramallah and the result was negative, but who would believe Arabs?

As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'

New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter.

Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.

Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.
According to Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coroner's Department"The cockroaches come out at night," he said of the residents.

Wayne Madsen Report

September 13, 2005 -- The Bush administration continues to back the Khuzestan separatist movement in the oil-rich southwestern province the majority Arab population calls Ahwaz. As reported by WMR last month, the backing for the Sh'ia Arab separatist movement involves direct support by U.S. intelligence operatives. However, this support primarily involves support from the parallel intelligence operation established in the Pentagon under intelligence undersecretary Stephen Cambone and Undersecretary for Policy and Plans Eric Edelman (the successor to Douglas Feith who was, most recently, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey). the CIA largely remains outside of the anti-Iran operations.

In fact, an Arabic speaking Iranian-American from Khuzestan who works for the Department of Defense has been assigned to the Pentagon's Office of Northern Gulf Affairs office within the Policy and Plans Directorate's Near East and South Asia (NESA) division to help coordinate activities with the Ahwaz separatist groups -- some of whom have committed terrorist acts in the province. The Gulf Affairs office replaced the infamous Office of Special Plans that crafted the phony intelligence in the lead up to the war in Iraq.



Bush administration seeks to break off oil-rich Arab province from Iran

In addition, U.S. intelligence sources report that the State Department, through the active support of new International Public Diplomacy Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, is actively supporting clandestine radio broadcasts to Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan. These broadcasts are conducted by the Voice of the Ahwaz Revolution and are transmitted from Basra, Iraq. The clandestine radio broadcasts complement the very public Radio Farda (broadcasts to Iran in Farsi) and Radio Sawa (broadcasts in Arabic throughout the Arab world). Both stations are operated by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, a State Department entity headed by Norman Pattiz, the owner of radio syndicator Westwood One who has strong ties to the right wing government of Israel.

The Pentagon and State Department are also jointly supporting other propaganda activities aimed at stirring up rebellion among Iranian minorities, including Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, and southern Azeris. In addition to the Ahwaz Arabs, the U.S. actions are having their greatest impact among the Kurds. The U.S. is also supporting clandestine radio broadcasts to incite Iran's Baluchi minority in eastern Iran. These broadcasts are also transmitted from Iraq (Sulaymaniyah, in northern Iraq). Other clandestine broadcasts are aimed at Iranian Azeris and Kurds. U.S. efforts to stir up Iran's Turkmen population along the Caspian Sea have been totally unsuccessful, according to U.S. intelligence sources. 'The Iranian Turkmen are only interested in caviar and tobacco," said one U.S. intelligence source.

The Venezuelan Series (Part 2): Resistance to Privatization of Aluminum and Steel

[This is a series of posts based upon my experiences during an August tour of Venezuela. For Part 1, go here. Comments can be e-mailed to me at restes60@earthlink.net.]

In my first post, I described the social activism that resulted from the creation of state owned steel and aluminum companies in Bolivar state. Such activism, initiated by leftists who consciously entered the plants to organize the workers in these industries, played an essential role in facilitating the emergence of Hugo Chavez. As Richard Gott has described in his recent book, Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, Chavez's failed 1992 coup attempt mortally wounded the neoliberal duopoly that governed Venezuela. If anything, it appears that the coup, and the subsequent outpouring of popular support for Chavez after his brief, successful televised exhortation to his supporters to cease opposition to the government, created a sense of urgency for people both inside and outside the country to accelerate plans for the privatization of state owned industries.

Greenspan, the Wizard of Bubbleland

The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank annual symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is a ritual in which central bankers from major economies all over the world, backed by their supporting cast of court jesters masquerading as monetary economists, privately rationalize their unmerited yet enormous power over the fate of the global economy by publicly confessing that while their collective knowledge is grossly inadequate for the daunting challenge of the task entrusted to them, their faith-based dogma nevertheless should remain above question. That dogma is based on a single-dimensional theology that sound money is the sine qua nonof economic well-being. It is a peculiar ideology given that central banking as an institution derives its raison d'etre from the rejection of a rigid gold standard in favor of monetary elasticity.

Why Iran can't become the new China

TEHRAN - Ibrahim Yazdi was the man who convinced Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to wear a bulletproof jacket on the chartered Air France flight that took the imam from Paris to Tehran to consolidate the triumph of the Islamic revolution in January 1979. He was one of the Westernized, Islamic non-turbaned princes of the revolution himself. He was the man who "translated" Khomeini to the international med

A Fatal Incuriosity

I hate spending time in hospitals and nursing homes. I find them to be some of the most depressing places on earth.

Maybe that's why the stories of the sick and elderly who died, 45 in a New Orleans hospital and 34 in St. Rita's nursing home in the devastated St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, haunt me so.

You're already vulnerable and alone when suddenly you're beset by nature and betrayed by your government.

At St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over their mouths. As Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a door.

Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders

Incompetence

Chanelling Rocky Marciano Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington

"I TOLD the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country, and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people paid with their lives--1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies."

George Galloway