Archive for the ‘world’ Category
Christmas gifts for people who could really use them
Please consider donating to Oxfam Unwrapped and similar charities, this Christmas. Economic downturn or not there are people who desperately need survival aid, especially in Somalia.
Hope that helps, if you wondered what to get me *grin*
Nuclear power back on the agenda
Greg Palast writes:
So, we’ve got both candidates hawking the nuclear snake oil. But there is one difference between them. A big big BIG difference.
McCain’s ready to spend a hundred billion dollars on nuclear power, no questions asked. But Barack Obama puts a crucial condition on his approval for building new nukes: an affordable method of [...]
US – Iranian tensions rise dramatically
The following roundup is from the Chinese People’s Daily:
Iranian troops have shot down a U.S. pilotless spy plane recently, an Iranian lawmaker announced on Tuesday as the Islamic Republic was facing increasing military pressure from its arch rival –the United States. The aircraft was brought down when it was trying to cross the borders “during the [...]
Laughing through clenched teeth
Half asleep this morning I was daydreaming about the psychological state of a Guantanamo inmate.
No real idea why my life had suddenly changed, nor even a clear memory of the Pakistani soldiers taking me from my bed. Memory has become a series of tangible fragments, each a smooth greenish white like the concrete lit by [...]
Cut and run from the “Surge”?
Ok, here’s a thought.
The people who think the surge, as it’s called, is a good idea are the same people who think that what they call cut and run is a really bad idea. Pulling troops out of Iraq, they say, will give aid and comfort to terrorists. Iraq would fall like a domino, and [...]
Who is the leisure class?
Vasco Pyjama has been on fire since coming back to Australia. Here she outlines the basis of the divide between the developing world and the west:
Two years ago, I travelled through Mindanao, the war-torn southernmost island of the Philippines. Villages there were populated with modest wooden huts made with coco lumber and leaf roofing. Then [...]
One world
Vasco Pyjama is an aid worker who has recently been in Afghanistan and Nias in Indonesia. She is now in Australia and suffering from culture shock.
I asked her how she coped with being back in Australia. With the difference between the worlds she saw. She looked sad and shrugged. And said that [...]
Lynching the scapegoat
I’m unmoved by Hussein’s hanging. It would mean something if it signalled a turn for the better in Iraq, but to me it simply indicates that the US has created such a catastrophe there that they still fear a vanquished and powerless enemy. Nevertheless, commentators around the world have been able to draw more valuable [...]
One thousand words…
Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. Starving boy and a missionary. Mike Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes [...]
Science threatens the Emperor
The latest in a line of Bush administration censorship of science. US Geological Survey scientists must now submit work for screening before it can be published.
The famously oppressive Qing dynasty in China used secret police to crack down on any science which could possibly be construed to show that the Qing emperors were less than [...]
Genocidal crisis in Darfur intensifies
Eric Reeves:
The US attempts to bluff Khartoum’s génocidaires with “Plan Bâ€Â; Kofi Annan seeks to burnish his legacy after complicity in another genocide; the European Union and Canada offer nothing but more bluster; the Arab League continues its mendacious ways; the African Union is a shambles
Globalization or slavery?
Capitalism is about choice, we’re told. The prevailing wisdom is that regulation of the market is a discredited idea, fallen with the old communist regimes. People have the opportunity to benefit from their hard work and innovation, so they have the incentive to be more productive. At the same time the Darwinian process of market [...]
Humanitarian assistance in Darfur collapses
Eric Reeves on Darfur and Eastern Chad:
“Humanitarian assistance is rapidly collapsing. Khartoum, having secured the security status quo in “negotiations†with the UN and African Union, has returned to its genocidal onslaught.”
“Privatise people” – Yes-men stunt
The Yes-men managed another wonderful stunt the other day:
At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for “full private stewardry of labor” for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa’s free trade [...]
A letter from Peachy
Some months ago I met a woman called Peachy who was active in forest campaigning. She recently attended the G20 Protests in Melbourne. The event was planned as a peaceful protest with a carnival atmosphere, but the event overshadowed by violence both from some protesters and police.
Peachy wrote an impassioned and thoughtful response to these [...]
Two sides of the G20 protest
The media have portrayed the anti-globalisation protests as a struggle between violent protestors and well restrained police. It’s true that the protests have been marked by violence, from at least a section of the large demonstration, but that’s only one side of the story.
The other side involves both peaceful protest and police brutality.
Hope, poverty, and fuck you
All the drowning children.
The world is full of ways in which thoughtful and compassionate people have been able to find ways to help those in need, transforming lives of poverty and desperation.
The Fred Hollows Foundation, for example, trains local eye surgeons to perform simple cataract operations which allow otherwise blind people throughout the developing world [...]
A brief history of nuclear North Korea
In 1993 North Korea had one functioning nuclear reactor, and was in the process of building other much larger facilities. They were based on the Magnox design, and were well suited to the production of weapons grade plutonium as a by-product. In fact the Magnox station “Calder Hall” had been used for decades for just [...]
The best lack all conviction
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is [...]
Air force ordered to stand down on 9/11
Cheney seems to have ordered the US air force not to attack the commercial airliners hijacked on September 11.
The link and discussion is here
