http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/739427--tories-force-shutdown-of-hearing-on-torture
Opposition blasts boycott as whistleblower readies rebuttal to Ottawa today
Omar Khadr going to 'Gitmo north'?
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/739399--omar-khadr-going-to-gitmo-north
'US fighter jets attack Yemeni fighters'
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20091214&articleId=16542
The Daily Telegraph on Sunday reported that the US has sent special forces to Yemen to train its army.
The reports of the US military intervention in Yemen come as Saudi Arabia is also lending full support to the Yemeni government's crackdown on Yemen's Houthi minority.
Saudi Arabia has launched cross-border ground attacks against Yemeni fighters and its fighter jets have reportedly dropped phosphorus bombs on Yemen's northern areas.
International aid agencies and some UN bodies including United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have voiced concern over the dire condition of the Yemeni civilians who have become the main victims of the conflict in the country.
The United Nations which according to its charter is set up "to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace" has failed to adopt any concrete measures to help end the bloody war.
Key to H1N1 puzzle? Look to molecule 17 Looking at a group of otherwise healthy Spanish patients during H1N1's initial appearance, the study found that those with severe symptoms also had elevated levels of interleukin 17.
Known as a cytokine, the molecule is one of several that help regulate the body's immune response to viruses and bacteria. But interleukin 17 is also associated with such inflammatory autoimmune diseases as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, Kelvin said.
You have just landed on a politically incorrect blog which contains "offensive" material and language. A blog where I don't mince my words, nor beautify them. Bottom line, I don't give a damn about your sensitivities nor your twisted, contorted, hypocritical faces. You see, you have skinned us alive, we have no skin left. So take it, the way you dealt it -- Raw.
An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2009/12/reunion-1.html
Layla Anwar
December 14, 2009
A Reunion.
I feel so overwhelmed with sadness, I am unable to write much...I am actually forcing myself to write this post, hoping the act will help ease the pain...
I have met a relative who was jailed for many years by the American occupier. He has been finally released after 4 years of lingering and rotting away in prison with no charges.
He was transferred from one prison to another and was handed over to the puppet Iraqi forces where he spent his last two years of detention.
The puppets held him in a detention camp next to the ministry of Interior. He said it looked like an exact replica of Guantanamo. It consisted of metal cages covered with a white sheet. It is solely ruled by Shiites and 80% of all prisoners are Sunnis. The only Shiites inmates there are held for theft/kidnapping or forgery but no Shiite is held for political reasons.
I cannot go into all the details right now.
I met my relative after so many years. He is here for prolonged medical treatment.
Words are stuck in my throat choking me...
He has aged so much...He was tortured and electrocuted in the ministry of Interior He did not want to talk about it, he said "it's best to forget"...but he did say, the electrocutions were the worst. He said " Am now over it" and he hung his head low and I saw tears in his eyes...the wounds are too fresh and will remain so for a long time. I pretended I didn't see, so as not to embarrass him...We quickly changed subjects...
I asked him : Were there any Iranians ruling the prison ? He gave a faint smile and said: the whole government, apart from a very few, is Iranian.
Blair, Obama and the Narcissist's Defense
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd12152009.html
Since leaving office, Tony Blair has dipped his blood-smeared snout into various corporate troughs, amassing millions, while simultaneously becoming one of the great whited sepulchres of our day, making a great show of his conversion to Catholicism, his "faith foundation," and so on. He has even lectured at Yale Divinity School. But this holy huckster looks more haunted every day. The glaring, bulging eyes, the frantic rictus of his grin – indistinguishable from the grimace of a man in gut-clenching pain --- and the ever-more strident, maniacal defense of his war crimes give compelling testimony to the hellish fires consuming his psyche. Next month, Blair will go before the Chilcot Inquiry, a panel of UK Establishment worthies charged with investigating the origins of Britain's role in the invasion of Iraq. Although the worthies have been remarkably toothless in their questioning of the great and good so far – the smell of whitewash is definitely in the air – the inquiry has at least performed the useful function of bringing the forgotten subject of Iraq back into the public eye, while collating and confirming, with sworn testimony, much of what we have learned in dribs and drabs over the years about the rank, deliberate deceit behind this murderous catastrophe. One choice bit that has emerged from the inquiry is the revelation that the centerpiece of Blair's case for immediate war – the claim that Saddam Hussein could hit Europe with WMD-loaded missiles on just 45 minutes' notice – came from unconfirmed, third-hand gossip passed along by an Iraqi taxi driver.
Certainly, Tony Blair will face no official action for his crimes; he will not even lose any of his corporate sponsors, unlike the heinous Tiger Woods, whose sexual intimacy with consenting adults is obviously far worse than the murder of more than one million innocent people. (We'll never see Woods lecturing at Yale Divinity School now!)
"A narcissist's defense." As a description of Obama's Peace Prize speech, Macdonald's phrase could hardly be bettered. But the intense, near-pathological self-regard in the speech was not Obama's alone, of course; we must do him the credit of acknowledging that in this regard, at least, he was what we so often proclaim our leaders to be: the embodiment of the nation. His soaring proclamation of American exceptionalism, in a setting supposedly devoted to universal principles of peace, was breathtaking in its chutzpah – but entirely in keeping with the feelings of the vast majority of his countrymen, and the ruling elite above all.
Many have already remarked on Obama's adoption of Bush's principle of unilateral, "pre-emptive" military action, anytime, anywhere, whenever a leader declares his nation is under threat. This approach -- which Bush called "the path of action" -- was roundly scorned by critics of the former regime, many of whom now scramble to praise Obama's "nuanced" embrace of aggression. But again, let us give credit where it is due; in this aspect of the speech, Obama did in fact go beyond Bush's more narrowly nationalist conception, saying: "I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation."
Thus Obama would, apparently, extend the right of unilateral military action to "any head of state" that feels the necessity of defending his or her nation. But of course this is just empty verbiage, a pointless, bald-faced lie that not even Bush would have tried to get away with. Would Obama accept a unilateral, pre-emptive strike by Tehran against Israel, where top legislators and government officials routinely talk of attacking Iran? Would Obama cheer the "right" of Russia to strike unilaterally at Poland if the U.S. "missile shield" deal, now on hold, was suddenly consummated? Would Obama support a unilateral strike by India at Pakistan -- or vice versa -- in the still-seething cauldron of tensions on the subcontinent, where both nations legitimately feel threatened by the other? Would he support the right of Kim Jong-il to "defend his nation" by attacking South Korea the next time there is a threatening border incident there?
No, it is clear that only the United States -- and its allies, like Israel -- are to be allowed the supreme privilege of unilateral war.
Resistance in Bethlehem's Villages
http://www.counterpunch.org/cantarow12152009.html
Christmas is coming. My e-mail has returned at least one plea to help Bethlehem – Christ’s birthplace crucified by Israel’s segregation wall; 25 foot-high concrete punctuated by militarized watch towers surrounds the entire town. PEACE BE WITH YOU reads a huge legend on the wall without (apparently) the slightest trace of irony; stenciled in English. Hebrew, and Arabic, it’s signed, ISRAELI MINISTRY OF TOURISM.
What lies beyond Bethlehem – the Bethlehem province or “governate,” – is equally shocking, though invisible to the casual visitor. According to a May, 2009, UN report, Bethlehem governate’s total land mass is 660 square kilometers, but only 13 per cent remains for Palestinians to use. The rest has vanished under the Greater Israel’s ever-expanding colonies and “outposts”; its ever-lengthening wall (declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice: Israel and its US backer have simply ignored the ruling); and Israel’s designation of most of Bethlehem’s region as “Area C”. (The Oslo Accords diced the West Bank into Areas “A” -- Palestinian Authority (PA) rule; “B” –PA and Israel joint rule; and “C” – Israeli rule. Area C is 60 per cent of the West Bank). Palestine’s Stop the Wall campaign, launched in 2002, has been waging nonviolent resistance here to retain and regain land – weekly demonstrations in the village Al Mas’ara, land-reclamation in other villages (clearing stones, preparing the land for planting, petitioning the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture for supplies and trees), and rallying a population exhausted by over three decades of “peace process” that has meant only land-theft for the Palestinians.
Copenhagen spill over
http://chezremi.blogspot.com/2009/12/copenhagen-spill-over.html
An old friend and colleague with whom I worked for several years at meetings and assemblies of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent me a note with a link to a statement made in Shangai by Wei Jiafu, the boss of the COSCO Group, the world's largest shipping conglomerate, proposing to "us[e] nuclear power onboard merchant ships as a further green initiative."U.S.: Climate Policy Derailed by Corporate Interests
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49560
"The bottom line is our method of private financing of campaigns is a disaster," Tyson Slocum, director of energy at Public Citizen, an NGO, told IPS.
From the start of a congressional campaign, to the drafting of legislation, to the launching of an ex-congressman's, lucrative lobbying career, big business is at work, they say.
"The special interests pay for our political campaigns. They in a sense are buying access," Mary Boyle, spokesperson for Common Cause, told IPS.
"They have a very strong voice and a very strong role in setting our political agenda," said Boyle, whose group is proposing an overhaul.
Among corporations with influence in the U.S. Congress, oil and gas companies wield particular power, and they came out in force to shape the climate bill that passed the House in June.
That bill proposes reducing U.S. carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. This is roughly four percent below 1990 levels, not the 40 percent reduction called for to keep the planet from warming 2 C. A similar measure is sitting before the Senate.
Oil and gas companies spent 121 million dollars to dispatch 745 lobbyists to Congress between Jan. 1, 2009 and Oct. 26. They also poured money into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has increasingly lobbied on behalf of oil interests, on the climate bill and other legislation, Juhasz said.
BP America spent 11.3 million dollars, Chevron spent 15.5 million dollars, ConocoPhilips spent 13.2 million dollars and Exxon Mobil 20 million dollars, among dozens of gas and oil companies that have lobbied so far in 2009. Last year, Exxon Mobil spent 29 million dollars lobbying Congress. Electric power companies spent 108 million so far this year, while the coal industry spent 10 million.
Corporate and special interests spent a total 2.5 billion dollars lobbying members of the U.S. Congress during the first nine months of 2009, says the Center for Responsive Politics.
At last count, 321 former members of Congress and staff now make their living as lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
U.S.: Aging Coal Plants Still a Fixture in South
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49715
Altogether, U.S. power plants dumped 2.56 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air in 2007.
Of the nation's 25 dirtiest power plants, 10 are in the South - and all but one of those was built before 1980. The nation's dirtiest power plant, the Southern Co.'s Plant Scherer in South Georgia, emitted more than 27.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007.
Lee Martin, a Macon, Georgia resident and an active member of Georgians for Smart Energy, knows firsthand the effects of Plant Scherer.
"It emits the most carbon dioxide of any plant in the world," he told IPS. "It emits 1,700 pounds of mercury every year."
Martin said the plant affects portions of Houston, Bibb, and Monroe Counties, with the latter two in non-attainment, which means the air quality does not meet certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
"It's a restrictive designation," he said. "What it really means is the air is unhealthy for people to breathe."
Yesterday was World AIDS Day, and my mind is on Africa right now. Not because HIV-AIDS isn't a problem in the United States (it is), or growing in every demographic (it is), but because the scope of the problem in Africa is so terrifying. The life expectancy in Botswana, where 37% of the adult population is HIV-positive, has been reduced from 65 to 35; there are 73 million AIDS orphans in Africa, making up 7% of the African population; and the disease is spreading. HIV-AIDS in Africa is to the 21st century what the bubonic plague in Europe was to the 14th.
How Smallpox Eradication Led to a Tragedy: Interview with Laurie Garrett
http://globalhealth.change.org/blog/view/how_smallpox_eradication_led_to_a_tragedy_interview_with_laurie_garrett
I always try to remind people of one of the big tragedies of the recent past: smallpox eradication. Tragedy? Well, eradicating smallpox was certainly one of the single greatest achievements in human history, saving far more lives in the 20th C than were lost in all wars, combined. BUT, the tragic mistake was in building a vast infrastructure worldwide to tackle the disease, training millions of community health workers and funding enormous surveillance and statistics operations in the poorest countries on earth...and then dismantling it all the day eradication was officially declared. I will fight my hardest to ensure that such a mistake is never repeated.
Scotland's deer are changing shape due to hybridisation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8413000/8413647.stm
Japanese sika deer, brought to the country in the 19th Century, have bred extensively with native deer : hybridisation is causing red deer to become smaller and sika deer to become larger.
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