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Wednesday, June 6, 2007 |
George Monbiot: "The leaders of the G8 nations present themselves as a force for unmitigated good. Sometimes they fail, but they seek only to make the world a kinder place. Bob Geldof and Bono give oxygen to this deception, speaking of the good works the leaders might perform, or of the good works they have failed to perform; but not mentioning the active harm. They refuse to acknowledge that what the rich nations give with one finger they take with both hands.
The G8 demands action on climate change; the World Bank, controlled by the G8 nations, funds coal burning power stations and deforestation projects. The G8 requests better terms of trade for Africa; Europe and the United States use the world trade talks to make sure this doesn't happen. The G8 leaders call for the debt to be reduced; the IMF demands that poor nations remove barriers to the capital flows which leave them in hock. The G8 leaders simultaneously wring their hands and wash their hands. We have done what we can; if we have failed, it is only because of the corruption of third world elites."
John Perkins: "The Group of Eight are the wealthiest countries in the world, and basically they run the world. And the leader is the United States, and it's actually the corporations within these countries that run it. It's not the governments, because, after all, the governments serve at the pleasure of the corporations. In our own country, we know that the next two final presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat alike, are going to each have to raise something like half a billion dollars. And that's not going to come from me and you. Primarily that's going to come from the people who own and run our big corporations. They're totally beholden to the government. So the G8 really is this group of countries that represent the biggest multinational corporations in the world and really serve at their behest.
And what we're seeing now in Europe - and we're seeing it very strongly in Latin America, we're seeing it in the Middle East - we're seeing this huge undercurrent of resistance, of protest, against this empire that's been built out of this. And it's been such a subtle empire that people haven't been aware of it, because it wasn't built by the military. It was built by economic hit men. Most of us aren't aware of it. Most Americans have no idea that these incredible lifestyles that we all lead are because we're part of a very vicious empire that literally enslaves people around the world, misuses people. But we're beginning to understand this. And the Europeans and the Latin Americans are at the forefront of this understanding."
11:15:58 AM 
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eIntifada: "The second Palestinian intifada has been crushed. The 700km wall is sealing the occupied population of the West Bank into a series of prisons. The "demographic timebomb" - the fear that Palestinians, through higher birth rates, will soon outnumber Jews in the Holy Land and that Israel's continuing rule over them risks being compared to apartheid - has been safely defused through the disengagment from Gaza and its 1.4 million inhabitants. On the fortieth anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel's security establishment is quietly satisfied with its successes.
But like a shark whose physiology requires that, to stay alive, it never sleeps or stops moving, Israel must remain restless, constantly reinventing itself and its policies to ensure its ethnic project does not lose legitimacy, even as it devours the Palestinian homeland. By keeping a step ahead of the analysts and worldwide opinion, Israel creates facts on the ground that cement its supremacist and expansionist agenda.
With the 3.7 million Palestinians in the occupied territories caged inside their ghettos, unable to protest their treatment behind fences and walls, the turn has come of Israel's Palestinian citizens.
As Israel's Palestinian politicians have long been claiming, a Jewish and democratic state is intended as a democracy for Jews only. No one else is allowed a say - or even an opinion."
EarthTimes: "A former Dutch UN observer has said Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War, the 40th anniversary of which falls Tuesday, and that the Jewish state provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land."
Palestine is still the issue.
What's happening now is ethnic cleansing by the Jewish authorities.
11:06:42 AM
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WashingtonPost: "Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in prison for lying to federal investigators about his role in the leak of a CIA officer's identity by a judge who declared the evidence against him 'overwhelming' and concluded that Libby 'got off course' as a White House employee."
CommonDreams: "The Bush administration's plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos yesterday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden."
Bush's chauffeur can rest assured he won't be arrested.
10:57:11 AM
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AfterDowningStreet: "Workers from the Iraqi Pipelines Company in Basra are on strike today.
Workers began the strike at 6.30 this morning by shutting two 14" pipelines carrying oil and gas products inside Iraq."
10:51:05 AM
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