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Tuesday, December 03, 2002
Don't do what George does "Malaysia has added its voice to a growing row in Asia after Australian Prime Minister John Howard raised the possibility of pre-emptive strikes against militants in the region. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said any unsanctioned action against groups on its soil would be considered an act of war. But the US has backed Mr Howard's comments, in which he said he would be prepared to order pre-emptive strikes if he knew groups were planning to attack Australia. " The Prime Minister of Australia is learning that just because the world's last superpower can get away with threatening to invade any country in the world doesn't mean that Australia can too. Now his country is the target for all of those remarks that the governments in the region may have been too wary to openly point at the United States. Read more here.
Starve them "The Israeli army (IDF) has become embroiled in a dispute with the United Nations after it destroyed a building containing hundreds of tons of food aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." So what was the IDF's justification for this? Well, apparently they are in the process of creating a "safe passage for Jews between a nearby Jewish settlement and Jewish enclaves inside Hebron" by blowing up or bulldozing buildings (mostly owned by Palestinians). Just in case you don't think that this is a very good justification for blowing up a warehouse full of food aid, they also toss in the possibility that there was at least one militant Palestinian hiding in the upper floors of the building. Oh, and they didn't notice that the warehouse was full of food aid, despite the U.N. flag and the clearly marked food containers. Read more here.
Wanted: Strongman "Iraq is a patchwork country put together by a British colonial office in 1921. The country was deliberately splintered between the majority Shiites (who have no power), the minority Sunnis (who have all the power) and Kurds (who would rather have their own country). It was planned instability, with everyone at everyone else's throat, while the English quietly plundered the oil. A U.S. invasion will bring all that instability to the surface, and it is not unlikely that Iraq could literally implode, spreading instability to the rest of the region, with Iraq's huge oil reserves up for grabs. The oilmen in the White House can't have that, so we are going to need another strongman to keep things together. The leading candidates are a chilling lot." This excellent piece take a look at some of the men that have been proposed as possible new leaders for Iraq, and pretty clearly shows that the last thing on the minds of the current U.S. administration is the future happiness of the Iraqi people. Read the whole thing here.
The 12 Days of Fascism As cribbed from a recent issue of Undernews: On the twelfth day of fascism
Outside the law "The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say." This piece from the Washington Post does a good job of laying out many of the legal precedents the Bush administration is trying to establish in the name of the "war on terror," and what effects they might have on citizens and non-citizens alike. I especially like the part about how detainees can be held until such time as the "war on terror" is over, despite the fact that this "war" is, for all intents and purposes, likely to go on indefinitely. Read the whole article here [registration required].
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