Free Mojtaba and Arash Day Feb 22

The Committee to Protect Bloggers was established to counter the increasing
number of bloggers who are being subjected to arrest and harrassment world-wide.
The Committee's first campaign is 'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day' to be held today. And it is getting a lot of publicity. "Overwhelming, between PRI's The World, BBC, Slashdot, BoingBoing, we have over twice as much traffic as usual, halfway through the day. People are planning to do the day by the score," said Curt. When asked if this campaign will work and if the Iranian government will listen and release both Mojtaba and Arash, he told me about Sina, a freed Iranian blogger, "Sina credited the attention of the blogosphere for making the Iranian authorities extremely uncomfortable and letting him go. We're hoping the same thing will happen here."

The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation

In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved.

As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.

As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalisation pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.

Vananda Shiva

Suicide Seed: Bombshell in Bangkok

Farmers-Struggle-Against-GMO

While the servile canadian press was strangely silent on the event, the internet was certainly abuzz with Canada's turnabout at a UN meeting in Bangkok where they attempted to overturn an international moratorium on the universally condemned "suicide seed" technology which prevents 2nd generation seeds from regenerating. The original leak came from the canadian-based ETC Group. It was followed up with a report of a speech to the conference by Percy Schmauser, the Saskatchewan farmer who was sued by Monsanto for allegedly using "their" patented Canola seeds.
Monsanto versus Schmauser

The Canadian National Farmers Union, has initiated a
"Seed Saver Campaign" to prevent regulatory changes proposed by the federally-funded and corporate-dominated "Seed Sector Review Panel" preventing canadian farmers from saving and using seeds developed over decades, many in association with taxpayer funded agencies and universities. The NFU also issued a statement condemning the canadian delegation's Bangkok proposals.
There are at least 2 quickly-organized US letter-writing campaigns and a British one. here and here
After being swamped this week by protest emails and letters, the Canadian government was forced to soften its public position on terminator, but it continued to press a solidly pro-terminator view in the corridors and in a committee to negotiate a draft text on Terminator.

"The draft text on Terminator released thursday morning was appalling-it looked like it was written by the multinational seed industry", sid Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, speaking from Bangkok. "It strongly reflected the Canadian government's pro-terminator position as revealed earlier this week in the leaked document"

Thomas reported that the Canadian bid to overturn the moratorium on GM Terminator Technologies (GURTS) was backed only by the Governments of New Zealand and Australia in the UN meeting. The United States has never ratified the Treaty and was not part of the 174 nation deliberations. It has always been a strong proponent of "Terminator" technology.

The UN conference rejected the draft report proposal.

Paranoid shift

paranoid.101

Michael Hasty makes a good case for your justified
fears in this Online Journal article.

By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer

January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me. .....more

Who was the "ordinary" Iraqui Woman at The SOTU Session

It seems the "ordinary Iraqui" woman pointed out by Dubya in his State of the Union speech, who held up a purple-stained finger, showing she voted, is a very important figure in the ruling elite and strongly linked to US hardline front organisations and possibly linked, like Chalabri, to the CIA.
Brings to mind the little girl whose tearful testimony about Saddam's troops throwing babies from incubators to the floor, turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Pere Bush's campaign to whip up support for his Iraqui campaign. It was later completely discredited.
This post was quick off the mark in pointing out the latest subtle deception.

Scoop: William Rivers Pitt: The Story of the Ghost

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967

Chuckman: Freedom on Steroids

chuckman-freedom%20march

John Chuckman is a former chief economist of Texaco Canada and an excellent journalist who has a different perspective than one could imagine from a corporate executive. His articles appear in dissadentvoice, yellowtimes, and counterpunch among others. He also has an ability with graphics which cut to the quick.

Freedom on Steroids: John Chuckman

A writer at The NY Times counted 27 references to freedom in Bush's inaugural speech. The speech contained not one reference to his ugly war in Iraq, but for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis the only freedom established by Bush's invasion was their freedom to miserable deaths or future lives as cripples.more...

Some other examples of his caustic art can be found here

Canada: A pawn of the US in Haiti

Yves Engler, a Montreal-based jounalist recently spent time in Haiti and points out the yellow journalism of the Canadian media as it relates to the Canadian role in Haiti.

Bill Moyers-Global Environment Citizen Award

Bill Moyers is still one of the most astute liberal journalists who hasn't succumbed to the cowardice of of corporate news-speak. Link to his acceptance speech at the Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizens Award.

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.' ....more

The Blacklisted Journalist

Al Is Back

An excellent site hosted by Al Aronovitch with other guest writers.
Aronovitch was one of the most "Gonzo" of the cultural jounalists
of the 60's and a confrere of many of the top cultural icons.

A Real View of the US Election Results

wakeup_america_sm

I had contemplated putting up some of the many pages bemoaning the GOP victory in the US presidential victory. A front page from a UK paper totally in black with a small caption. "Are that many Americans so stupid"? Another black-page simulation of a Time Magazine cover with the caption "W'hy". Or one of the many commentaries of uplifting consolation to the US people. This interview with the Indian writer Arundhati Roy just before the election best puts things in perspective.

I think one of the dangers that we face is that politics becomes a discussion only about personalities, and we forget that the system is in place, and it doesn’t matter all that much who is piloting the machine. So as I said in my talk at the American Sociological Association in San Francisco, this whole fierce debate about the Democrats and the Republicans and whether Bush or Kerry is better is like being asked to choose a detergent. Whether you choose Tide or Ivory Snow, they’re both owned by Procter & Gamble

THERE IS an alternative to terrorism. What is it?

JUSTICE.

Arundhati Roy

Letter from a Minnesota Highway

Bush and Company Have Already Won

As Ralph Nader points out in this article, the
"Anyone but Bush" strategy adopted by US liberals,
progressives, and peace activists has allowed the
corporate agenda full sway in the coming election.

AlterNet: Fight For Your Freedom to Read

Another victory for creeping fascism in the US as the Congress denies passage of the "Freedom to Read Protection Act"

Yesss, But......

US Vice-Pres Debate 

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Anti-feminists for Iraqi Women

"I am pleased to announce that, as part of the Department of State's Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative, we are awarding $10 million in grants to several U.S.-based non-governmental organizations to train Iraqi women in the skills and practices of democratic public life…These grants will…mobilize women across the land to build a secure, prosperous and democratic Iraq." – Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sept. 27, 2004

Freedom of Thought > 1940's Propaganda Remixed | CafePress

A way-cool site for remixed World War II posters.

Journalism Under Fire - by Bill Moyers

Address to the Society of Professional Journalists Saturday, September 11, 2004, New York City in which he announced his intention to retire in three months from active journalism, and his views of the state of the "Free Press".

An echo of the "Free Press" toast of 1953 below.

John Swinton, was the former Chief of Staff for the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print"). Called by his peers "The Dean Of His Profession", John was asked in 1953 to give a toast before the New York Press Club, and in so doing made a monumentally important and revealing statement. He stated:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

CNN.com - Canadian MP calls U.S. 'idiots'

Lib. MP Carolyn Parrish continues to call it "like it is".
A view shared by most canadians.

DUBYA's FOLLIES

With Geoge Walker Bush as president, the US hoi
polloi has accepted an ideology in which dumbness and
virtue play "Hide and Seek" and justice and morality
are ignored.

Here's my contrbution of "Bushisms"


DAILY DUBYA

"'I'm not going to talk about what I did as a child. What I am going to talk about -- and I am going to say this consistently -- [is that] it is irrelevant what I did 20 to 30 years ago. What's relevant is that I have learned from any mistakes I made. I do not want to send signals to anybody that what Gov. Bush did 30 years ago is cool to try.'
--Gov. Bush in an interview with WMUR-TV in New Hampshire

Hmm. I wonder if that includes Kerry who was busy
being a hero in Viet-Nam, however laudable that is.
But at least he came back and voiced his opposition
to the US war machines' full tilt boogy, while
"shrub" was evading the draft in the National Guard
champagne corp of "children of influential persons"
who weren't about to die in Viet-Nam no matter what
the advantages it would give to US dreams of empire.

The Iraq venture is bound to fail, like in V-N, because
people would rather have native oppressors than a
foreign ones, and possibly even a non-oppressive
representative government. Unlike the US puppet
governments, so beloved by neo-liberals.

Tide ? or Ivory Snow ?

Public Power in the Age of Empire

By Arundhati Roy Published: Sun August 29th, 2004 in Alternatives

A brilliant speech by the 1997 Booker Prize winning author of "The God of Small Things"