WorldPeace commentary on current events

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Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  Jesus - Matthew 10:34

The truth is often paradoxical.  Lao Tzu - Tao te Ching

• January 28, 2004  From miles around they come, pushing wheelbarrows in the relentless heat to collect sacks of maize meal, beans and cooking oil from the U.N. food agency.  The worst drought in more than a decade is sweeping through southern Africa, destroying crops, driving up food prices and leaving millions hungry -- even as foreign assistance dries up, governments and humanitarian agencies say.  Bad farming techniques, AIDS destroying the working population, global warming causing floods or drought coupled with the lack of international aid due to Bush's invasion of Iraq are causing millions to consider the reality of starvation.  No one in America can imagine a whole country without food.  And here is the real problem of starvation: If you feed people who cannot support themselves they breed and increase the problem.
• January 28, 2004  Iraq - What the current political process lacks, and it is a lack that the proposed elections will not remedy, is an initiative to bring together the representatives of the main groups to reach a new social contract to replace the old one before the elections are held. To simply call for elections and draw up a political process to hand over authority to a major religious group without a clearly defined  relationship between the communities would lead to disaster. What is needed today is a political process through which the three main communities can learn to compromise with each other, accommodate differences and achieve national reconciliation ? before elections are held, not afterward.  America democracy works because America was founded on democratic principles.  Iraq was not.  Iraq is the product of the British carving up the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century.  Modern Japan was not built in a day.  And the drums of civil war grow louder everyday in Iraq.  And the man who destabilized the Middle East is none other than "Cowboy Dubya Bush".
• January 27, 2004  The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has criticised curbs on free elections and the news media, as well as the Russian military campaign in Chechnya, in meetings with Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, and in an essay published in a Russian newspaper.  This is really something.  The United States and Britain unilaterally invade Iraq and then criticize Russia for following the American example.  Only a fool like Bush would try to set a double standard with Russia.
• January 27, 2004  On Wednesday, September 17, U.S. President George W. Bush admitted that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any role in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. President Bush stated, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11." The day before, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made similar comments, telling ABC's "Nightline" that "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11." Yet despite these statements by members of the Bush administration, according to a recent poll, some 70 percent of Americans believe that Saddam was personally involved with the terrorist attacks of that day.  Big Bush lie number one: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.  Big Bush lie number two: Saddam was linked to bin Laden and 911.  
• January 27, 2004  As a new year begins and the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq enters its tenth month, the Middle East is undergoing a series of changes that is altering the strategic calculus of the entire region. The U.S. military presence in the heart of the Middle East has had a substantial impact on the region, as regimes have adjusted their policies to adapt to new strategic realities. As Nadim Shehadi of Oxford University avers, "The U.S. has succeeded in triggering a dynamic for change," adding that "there is no way that things will remain as they are." Libya has agreed to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs and shed its pariah status, in addition to improving relations with Israel. Syria is trying to moderate its stance with Israel and Turkey. Iran is opening itself to snap inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and seeking rapprochement with Egypt after 25 years of discord. It is also working behind the scenes with Washington over Iraq, in a largely unnoticed development that benefits both sides. The region hasn't faced so much change in decades.  Yes, Bush is the catalyst of change in the Middle East.  The problem is that the change is too fast and has no clear goals or pre-planned objectives.  This is typical of Cowboy imperialism.
• January 27, 2004  There are hundreds of thousands of so called "protest" websites around the world. They highlight business scandals, political corruption and senseless wars. They also expose underhanded dealings from all levels of society. The ruling elite hates them because they use the Bill of Rights Act, and most civilized countries have one, to fly in the face of official misrepresentations. The mainstream politically compliant media treat them with contempt and their operators and writers are snubbed. Some unthinking ISP operators even refuse to host "protest" sites.  The freedom of the world will be guaranteed with a free and unrestricted internet.
• January 27, 2004  UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday that the slaughters in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s could have been prevented if the world had taken action as he opened the first international genocide conference in over 50 years.  "There can be no more important issue, and no more binding obligation, than the prevention of genocide," Mr Annan told ten heads of state and officials from dozens of nations gathered for the three-day conference hosted by Sweden.  The UN chief singled out as "especially shameful" the failure by the international community to take action in the former Yugoslavia during the wars of secession in the early 1990s and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.  I find it interesting that there has been no genocide conference in 50 years.  Of course the United States is still in denial about the slaughter of the American Indians in the nineteenth century and Israel is in denial about its slow and steady genocide in Palestine
• January 27, 2004  Retired Gen Anthony Zinni began warning that ousting Saddam Hussein, let alone invading Iraq, risked destabilizing the entire Middle East back in 1998 , when he led US Central Command and testified against the Iraq Liberation Act that made "regime change" official US policy.  And just six months before the actual invasion last March, in October 2002, he told the annual Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy, "we are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started".  While President George W. Bush tried hard to project a sense of confidence and control concerning Iraq and the larger Middle East in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, a careful look at the news this week suggested that Zinni's fears were not unfounded.  Yes, one of the blackest days in American history was when the Supreme Court elected the supreme imperialistic cowboy president of the United States.
• January 27, 2004  US and British leaders George W. Bush and Tony Blair are wrong to retroactively justify the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds , a global rights group said on Monday.  New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised the West for turning a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's atrocities - such as the 1988 massacre of Kurds - at a time when the level of slaughter could have justified armed intervention.  "Only mass slaughter might permit the deliberate taking of life involved in using military force for humanitarian purposes," the group's head Kenneth Roth said in its annual report.  "Brutal as Saddam Hussein's reign had been, the scope of the Iraq government's killing in March 2003 was not of the exceptional and dire magnitude that would justify humanitarian intervention," he wrote in one of the report's 15 essays.  Well, the fact is that the unilateral invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair was a mistake and what ever good comes of it if any was by pure accident and luck and not because Dubya planned it.
• January 26, 2004  U.S. intelligence agencies failed to detect that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were in a state of disarray in recent years under the increasingly erratic leadership of Saddam Hussein, the CIA's outgoing chief weapons inspector said in an interview this weekend.  David Kay, who led the government's efforts to find evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs until he resigned on Friday, said late Saturday that the CIA and other intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraqi scientists had sold ambitious but fanciful weapons programs to Hussein and had then used the money for other purposes.  This is amazing that Saddam was being manipulated by his yes men.  
• January 26, 2004  A part of the nation is at war - a slice of America where patriotism runs deeper than pockets, where parents don't belong to country clubs and children don't attend exclusive private schools. The duty of defending the nation has largely fallen to the less affluent; the all-volunteer military is disproportionately drawn from blue-collar homes.  If the war on terror were as important as the president claims - and the threat of Islamist fanatics a danger that will confront us for at least a generation - you'd think that military service would have taken on more urgency among Americans of all income brackets.  But it hasn't.  There has been no marked upturn in military recruitment since the terrorist atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001.  Without a draft, affluent Americans have felt free to turn their attention to other matters - the stock market, the tax-deductible Range Rover, the children's chances for admission to an exclusive college. The deaths of more than 500 American soldiers in Iraq have stirred little comment among the chattering classes, whose children are not at risk.  It is always the American middle class who fights the wars.  The educated wealthy are not so foolish to actually fight the wars that their greed starts.  In the American Civil War, the wealthy Yankees could buy out of the draft.  What would have happened if that were not possible?  What would happen if Dubya's own daughters were in Iraq in a military uniform?  Maybe little George would not have been so hell bent to kill Saddam for daddy George is his daughters faced death or the loss of limbs and disfiguration.
• January 26, 2004  Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday he was worried about Russia's democracy and its muscular dealings with its neighbors in some of Washington's most critical comments about Moscow.  In a front-page article published in major Russian daily Izvestia, he said Russian politics were not sufficiently subject to the rule of law and made clear there were limits to the U.S.-Russian relationship without shared values.  Powell needs to worry about the fact that he sold out his credibility to cowboy Dubya and his unilateral invasion of Iraq which was unprovoked. 
• January 26, 2004  Many Americans tend to be wary about aging Shiite Muslim clerics who dabble in politics. They recall how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini transformed Iran into a rabidly anti-American state and changed the region's political map as well.  Now, 25 years later, Iraq 's leading Shiite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, is showing the same Khomeini-like ability to mobilize followers by the thousands into the streets, often with a strong anti-U.S. undercurrent.  It will be interesting if the Shiites in Iran and Iraq unite into one political force.
• January 26, 2004  President Bush is trying to resuscitate a measure to place nationwide caps on medical malpractice awards, a move he has made a centerpiece of his election-year focus on health care.  Bush argues that a nationwide ceiling would drive down soaring health care costs and save taxpayers money. Senate Democrats stalled the bill last year, arguing it would help the insurance industry, not patients.  This is just more abuse of the poor who are abused by doctors.  It is just another example of Bush skewing morality and justice for the sake of corporate donations to his campaign.
• January 26, 2004  Federal deficits are setting records as President Bush and Congress plunge into the election year's budget work and both parties wonder if the red ink will prove to be a campaign issue.  The Congressional Budget Office planned to release its annual winter budget and economic outlook on Monday. It was expected to be a bit better in the short term than the CBO's last update in August, when it projected shortfalls of $480 billion for this year and $341 billion for 2005.  And where do all those Americans who voted for Dubya think the money is going to come from to pay off these deficits?  The answer is their children and their grandchildren.
• January 25, 2004  The blunt conclusion by David Kay, the chief US arms inspector in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein "got rid" of his unconventional weapons long before the Iraq invasion last year underscores what has become clear to intelligence experts in recent months: President George Bush moved against a country that posed a smaller risk than North Korea, Libya and Iran, or even one of America's allies, Pakistan.  Which proves that the prime motivator was oil, oil, oil.  Its the oil stupid.  The weapons of mass destruction was a cover story.
• January 25, 2004  For the time being, the new American order has generated a tsunami of anti-Americanism, with the United States perceived in some quarters as a greater threat to world peace than Al Qaeda. Deep fissures have developed between the United States and its allies; American policies have threatened to undermine Europe's drive toward unity; Muslims around the globe have turned against the United States; many leaders in Asia now look to China for their economic and political security; and Americans themselves have become polarized in their attitude toward the rest of the world. The ''war on terrorism'' has gotten mired in an anarchic Iraq; Guantanamo has come to represent a willful violation of civil rights; and tyrants have seized on the concept of pre-emptive war to justify their own suppression of opponents, now labeled terrorists.  And all this in just three years.  Congratulations Dubya and all who voted for you and will probably vote for you again.
• January 24, 2004  Prime Minister Tony Blair must admit that the Iraq war was a mistake, former Cabinet minister Robin Cook demanded today.  Mr Cook issued the challenge after US official David Kay quit his role as head of the organisation searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying he did not believe there were any major stockpiles to be found.  Tony Blair is able to pay the price for selling out to George Bush's pressure to invade Iraq.  Without Blair, Bush may have not been able to begin America's new imperialism.
• January 24, 2004  CIA director George Tenet named former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer on Friday to succeed David Kay to lead the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, an effort that so far has failed to substantiate pre-war US claims.  It has been ten months since the invasion of Iraq and we now know that Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction.
• January 24, 2004  President George W. Bush will ask Congress to approve $401.7 billion in defense spending for the budget year that begins in October, a 7 percent increase over this year, the Pentagon announced Friday.  The money does not include the cost of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And meanwhile on the domestic front seniors still cannot afford the medicines they need and millions of Americans have no health care.
• January 24, 2004  Palestinians, wherever or whomever they are, agree that they are today witnessing a new nakba, or catastrophe, one that is exceeded in pain, suffering and losses only by the nakba of 1948.  Since the second intifada broke out in September 2000, Israel has renewed its occupation; 3.4 million Palestinians (15 percent in refugee camps, 28.5 percent in rural areas and 56.5 percent in urban areas) have been isolated in cantons sealed off from one another by Israeli settlements, bypass roads and the powerful Israeli Army. Jerusalem has been cut off from the rest of the West Bank, with most of its national and social institutions closed down by the military. In addition, around 150,000 middle class and professional Palestinians have left the country.  And the world stands by as the neo Nazi Ariel Sharon inflicts more suffering on the Palestinians.
• January 22, 2004  Iranian President Mohammad Khatami yesterday disputed President Bush's claim that his tough stance against terrorism drove Iran to agree to United Nations inspections of its nuclear sites.  The leaders of Iran do not have a history of truth telling but I agree that the warmongering of George Bush was probably not the main reason that Iran opened up its nuclear program for inspection.
• January 22, 2004  Bush?s speech was an accurate reflection of the state of US relations with the world: marvelous in some respects, and dangerously naive in others.  Yes, a lot of talk about democracy and justice while trying to justify the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
• January 22, 2004   It is unrealistic to expect total honesty from politicians. Their partisanship guarantees self-praise and self-serving arguments. Still, citizens expect them to operate within reasonable rhetorical limits.  In the case of the president of the United States, whose constituency is not confined to his nation, the world expects his words to bear some resemblance to reality.  Non-Americans tuning in to George W. Bush's State of the Union address would have been disappointed.  Even allowing for his domestic needs in an election year, it was riddled with disingenuous, at times dishonest, formulations as well as logical inconsistencies.  
• January 22, 2004   CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country might be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment President Bush gave in his State of the Union address.  The CIA officers? bleak assessment was delivered verbally to Washington this week, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  The warning echoed growing fears that Iraq?s Shiite majority ?which has until now grudgingly accepted the U.S. occupation ? could turn to violence if its demands for direct elections are spurned.  Meanwhile, Iraq?s Kurdish minority is pressing its demand for autonomy and shares of oil revenue.  ?Both the Shiites and the Kurds think that now?s their time,? one intelligence officer said.  
• January 22, 2004   Palestinians are worried that US President George W Bush's failure to mention their conflict with Israel in his State of the Union address means he intends to scale down US involvement in the matter.  Israel, apparently unconcerned, just shrugged it off.  "The fact that President Bush did not mention the peace process at all means that 2004 will be a year of American disengagement from the peace process and the absence of the roadmap," said Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat.  Bush's political base is made up of Jews and the fundamental Christians that support them.  No way Bush is going to talk about the abject poverty of the Palestinians which is the real foundation of terrorism.  When people have no hope, death is meaningless.
• January 22, 2004  An Israeli court Wednesday indicted an Israeli businessman on charges of bribing Ariel Sharon, further complicating the prime minister's clouded legal situation.   Analysts said the indictment against real estate developer David Appel increases the chances that Sharon himself may face charges -- a move that would compel him to leave office. Sharon was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing. Opposition lawmakers urged the prime minister to resign.   Appel was indicted in the Tel Aviv Magistrates court for giving Sharon hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote an ambitious real estate project in Greece when Sharon was foreign minister in 1999, and to help rezone urban land near Tel Aviv both before and during his term as prime minister.  Sharon is just a Bush clone who bows to the almighty corporate dollar.  In the corporate atmosphere where there is a constant war for customers, brides and deals of an undemocratic nature are common.  Too often these corporate wheeler dealers forget that the rules of democracy supercede the rules of corporate warfare when dealing with maters not having to do with making a profit.  
• January 21, 2004   
• January 21, 2004  Though the US-led occupation has outlawed media calling for violence against coalition troops or other Iraqis, on the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi, Jenabi?s CDs and tapes ? and a series of others calling for violent insurrection against the Americans ? are the hottest sales items.  As rebels shoot down helicopters at a rate of about one a week in the Fallujah area, Jenabi?s tunes ring out in the bazaars of the so-called ?Sunni triangle.?  Just another Bush delusion that the people of Iraq would welcome Americans with open arms.  What country wants to be occupied by a foreign power?
• January 20, 2004    As U.S., U.N. and Iraqi officials met in New York to discuss Iraq's future, an estimated 100,000 Shiite Muslims marched in Baghdad yesterday demanding prompt, direct elections.  The march, stretching for miles and hours through crowded Baghdad streets, was the largest demonstration by backers of 73-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the Shiite cleric leader who apparently has shoved the United States off its path to a deliberate, U.S.-approved selection of an interim legislature leading up to direct elections in 2005.  "First, we will demonstrate," said one of the participants in the march, Sheik Hassan Zaki, a cleric from Najaf. "After that, we will strike, not going to our jobs. After that, the doors of paradise will open for the martyrs."  Bush was desperate to start a war in Iraq and now as per Afghanistan he wants out.  Especially with elections coming in ten months.  Thank God for term limits.
• January 20, 2004  In a packed, sweltering courtroom, Gen. Rom?o Dallaire ? dressed in a navy-blue pin-striped suit with his Order of Canada prominent on the lapel ? was asked by a prosecutor if he could identify the Rwandan army colonel alleged to be one of the architects of the genocide that took 800,000 lives.  Dallaire, who led the ill-fated 1994 United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, rose to his feet, glanced around, then fixed an icy glare on his former nemesis.  "He's on the extreme right, in the last row,'' Dallaire said, pointing at Theoneste Bagosora.  The retired Canadian general told the Rwanda genocide tribunal here yesterday he believed Bagosora was the "kingpin'' in orchestrating a carefully planned campaign to exterminate minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus during 100 days of bloodshed in 1994.  The vast majority of people can't even imagine what 8,000 death a day means.  And as per usual, who cares?  Right?
• January 20, 2004   Walid Shoebat is a rare commodity in the world of political violence, a former terrorist who feels bad about the things he did and the beliefs he once held and wants to make amends.  The Palestinian, who as a teenager was recruited by an extremist group to plant a bomb at an Israeli bank, is now renouncing his past at public appearances. His first Canadian talk is tonight in Toronto.  "It's something I owe the Jewish people for what I have done when I was young," Mr. Shoebat, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said yesterday in an interview.  Mr. Shoebat is speaking at the University of Toronto, where he will be interviewed in front of a student audience for a live taping of a radio show hosted by Los Angeles-based Rabbi Tovia Singer. "Most people don't know him," Mr. Singer said. "They will by the time the interview is over."  Mr. Shoebat said he is coming to Canada to challenge what he sees as anti-Israeli sentiment on university campuses, where the Arab-Israeli conflict has played out, sometimes violently, among Palestinian and Jewish students.  Born in Bethlehem to a Palestinian Muslim father and an American Christian mother who had met in the United States, Mr. Shoebat said that as early as kindergarten he was taught that Jews were "pigs and monkeys," killers and thieves. Teachers taught their students that one day the Jews would be slaughtered and driven from the Holy Land.
• January 20, 2004   United Arab Emirates - Saddam Hussein's former U.N. envoy accused the United States of deliberately sowing chaos in Iraq to prevent democracy from taking hold.  In interviews with The Associated Press on Saturday and Monday, former Iraqi U.N. envoy Mohammed al-Douri denounced a U.S. plan to create an appointed legislative body in Iraq and demanded free, direct elections instead.  He accused the United States of creating chaos in occupied Iraq as an excuse to avoid direct elections of a new government because that vote could lead to the United States losing control of Iraq's oil wealth and strategic location.  Al-Douri said democratic elections would be preferable to an appointed body no matter who wins ? even if his Sunni Muslim minority, which held favor during Saddam's rule, is defeated by Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.  "For me what is important is Iraq, not the majority or minority. I'll accept anyone who is elected ? a Shiite or even a Kurd, if that is the people's choice," al-Douri said. "The important thing is that the (Iraqi) people elect, and not have individuals appointed by foreign entities like the United States."
• January 19, 2004  President George W. Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, virtually guaranteeing that the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials said last week.  A growing number of commissioners had concluded the panel needed more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the attacks. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed the panel they oppose any delay, which could mean Sept. 11-related controversies emerging during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said.  Yes, the lies that George has foisted on the American public are piling up.  George does not want more added to the list before the Novmember elections.
• January 19, 2004  Six decades after the Holocaust, it is Arab and Muslim terrorism, rather than Naziism, that threatens Jews and Israel. Under the surface, both Israeli and Palestinian scholars say, there are differences between Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitism and the older, European version - differences that may even point out opportunities to solve the conflict.   But, they say, both Israelis and Palestinians are quick to seize the powerful imagery and rhetoric of classic anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, a habit that could help to close whatever doors to peacemaking remain open.  The current technological imbalance - Israel has a nuclear deterrent, the Palestinians' most lethal weapon is suicide bombers - means that Palestinians and other Muslims do not now threaten the existence of Israel as the Nazis once did Jews in Europe.
• January 19, 2004  The suicide truck bombing at a gate to the headquarters compound of the U.S.-led coalition killed 24 people and wounded about 120, Iraq's health minister said Monday.  It doesn't look like the capture of Saddam has made any difference in Iraq.  It is the people who directly oppose the American invasion, not Saddam loyalist.  Wrong again George.
• January 17, 2004   On the edge of a large field in a sprawling northern suburb of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the French sheep farmer and mascot of the anti-globalisation movement, Jos? Bov?, is holding forth among a group of farm workers from South America. Mr Bov?, pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, is selling his message that "le capitalisme" is not the only way.  Agreeing with him are 80,000 people from 130 countries at the World Social Forum, who want to prove that they are not just noisy anarchists but can offer alternatives to create a fairer planet.  Everybody is sure of what they are against - capitalism, imperialism and George Bush.
• January 17, 2004  The Bush administration is reaching out to the United Nations to help settle a nagging dispute with Iraqi Shiite leaders about how to choose an interim government by July 1 so the United States can end its political control of postwar Iraq.  George should have done this before the invasion or directly after.  But his cowboy arrogance would not let him stoop so low.
• January 17, 2004  Nine months after the fall of Baghdad, as insurgents target oil installations and Iraqis queue for fuel, the Bush administration has abandoned its pre-war assertions that Iraq?s natural resources would largely fund reconstruction.  Just another Bush lie.
• January 17, 2004  Recent developments in Northern Iraq may lead to the division of post-Saddam Iraq along ethnic lines. Kurds plan to turn their tactical gains from their role as unflinching US allies in ousting Saddam Hussein into a strategic and historic one - a Kurdish federation that would include one of the world's richest oil reserves in Kirkuk.  Plans for a Kurdish federation emerged unexpectedly last month after a unity move between two bickering Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani and the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Massous Barzani.  Turkey, Iran and Syria have Kurdish populations of their own. The Kurd population in the area is estimated at 20 million, with 12 million in Turkey, four million in Iran and about two million in Syria. Iraqi Kurds claim a population of about five million.  Yes, the Kurds are facing their only chance to establish themselves as an independent nation and that means war of another kind in the region.  Thanks, George.
• January 17, 2004  A roadside bomb detonated north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civil defense troopers, a U.S. military spokesman said. The deaths bring to 500 the number of American service members who have died since the Iraq war began.  Let me see, 500 dead in 300 days.  That comes to three Americans every two days.  Acceptable to George because his daughters are save at home drinking and partying but not acceptable to me.
• January 16, 2004   As E.U. nations debate whether to incorporate Christianity into the new European Constitution, religious minorities fear that the conservative elements pushing for the change have a darker agenda.   "THE common tradition of Christianity... has made Europe what it is," wrote T.S. Eliot. His words were quoted by British Member of Parliament Andrew Selous in the House of Commons on December 10, 2003, in response to calls across Europe to recognise Christianity in the new European Constitution. The Constitution is undergoing an overhaul as 10 new members, mainly from Eastern Europe, prepare to join the existing 15 in May 2004. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who until recently held the European presidency (Ireland is the current President), launched final constitutional talks in Rome in October last year.  If there has been any one cause of war on the planet it has been religion.  It is incredible that anyone would think that anything other than religious neutrality in any constitution is a sane idea.  Obviously, most people never learn.
• January 16, 2004   Israel will hunt and kill the founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, in retaliation for a deadly attack on Israeli border guards, Israel's deputy defense minister said in the bluntest warning yet against leaders of the Islamic militant group.  Yassin, a quadriplegic, did not try to hide Friday, making his way to a Gaza City mosque near his home in a wheelchair pushed by an assistant.  "We do not fear the threat of death," Yassin, wrapped in a brown blanket, told reporters outside the mosque. "We will not bow to pressure and resistance will continue until the occupation is destroyed."  And Americans support this stupidity when they have outlawed it as a political tool in America.  As the Europeans have said months ago, Israel is the biggest threat to WorldPeace.
• January 15, 2004  Human beings will walk again on the moon as early as 2015 and will eventually go to Mars under a revitalised space exploration plan announced yesterday by President George W. Bush. Critics derided the election-year announcement as a costly extravagance that could renew a military space race.  All of a sudden George is interested in all sorts of things (immigration, blacks) now that his re-election approaches.  This is just another promise he will forget after November.  Kennedy created enthusiasm for the space race in the sixties.  It is just words floating on the air coming from Bush.
• January 15, 2004 A Palestinian mother of two blew herself up at Israel?s border with Gaza yesterday, killing four Israelis and wounding seven people in the first suicide attack by a woman Hamas loyalist.  In a videotape, the bomber, identified as Reem Salih al-Raishy, 22, professed her love for her children and said the attack was meant to turn her body into "deadly shrapnel".  Smiling at times and cradling a rifle, Raishy said she had dreamed since she was 13 of "becoming a martyr" and dying for her people.  The moral of the story is that no wall will stop determined terrorists from killing Israelis and that the Palestinians have been pushed to their limit of desperation with the failure of the world to put an end to the religious insanity that pervades the Middle East. 
• January 14, 2004 At least 21 United States troops have committed suicide in Iraq, a growing toll that represents one of every seven American "non-hostile" deaths since the war began last March, the Pentagon said.  It surprises me that this story was published.  It shows the harsh reality of an unjustified war started by a lying imperialistic president.
• January 14, 2004  A Belgian cardinal who is among the leading candidates to succeed Pope John Paul on Monday broke the Roman Catholic Church's taboo on the use of condoms, declaring that in certain circumstances they should be used to prevent the spread of AIDS.  There is no doubt that the spread of AIDS would be significantly slowed with just a word from the Pope to Catholics worldwide to use condoms; not to mention a much needed reduction in the human population.  But hey, fewer new Catholics mean fewer dollars for the Catholic bureaucracy.
• January 11, 2004 The separation fence now under construction is not the first fence that was built in this country with the aim of preventing the passage of terrorists who seek to attack the civilian population. A similar fence was built by the British Mandate authorities in the 1930s, in an effort to prevent the infiltration of terrorist gangs and squads in the north of the country. A glance at the history of that fence seems to show that history is repeating itself. In 1936, the Arab Revolt erupted in Palestine. Initially directed against the Yishuv - the pre-1948 Jewish community in the country - it subsequently targeted the British administration as well.  There is no way a fence is going to stop suicide bombers in Israel.  The fence is about Sharon's grab for land and nothing more.  It is a unilateral move by Israel that shows an undeniably exclusionary arrogance among the Jews.
• January 11, 2004 The US military is overstretched by deployments around the world, with thousands of soldiers and reservists kept long beyond their release dates, experts say. Stressing the potentially dangerous effects on morale, the director of the Centre for Research on Military Organisation said "there is no question that the force is stretched too thin".  With the military stretched so thin, the question is whether the draft is coming along with inflating military budgets.  Cooperation with the U N would relieve most of problem.  Putting a leash on our imperialistic president would also help.
• January 10, 2004 President Bush is in a stronger position with voters than his father or President Clinton were at the same stage of their re-election bids, an Associated Press poll has found.  Men, evangelicals and rural voters are supporting Bush by big margins, while traditionally Democratic-leaning groups such as women have more divided loyalties, according to the poll.   Men, Christian soldiers and farmers.  Bush has tapped into the common man while he takes money from corporations and cares less about health care, human rights, the environment and the people who are influenced by slick ads and a President who rides a fighter onto an aircraft carrier.
• January 10, 2004 The Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Thursday accused the Bush Administration of systematically exaggerating the threat presented by Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  According to a Carnegie Endowment report which took six months to prepare, Iraq posed no threat to the United States and had no WMD program. The influential think tank said that the Bush Administration misrepresented the findings of the United Nations weapons inspectors in a way that turned threats from minor to serious.  The report also noted that Bush Administration officials systematically misrepresented and exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq?s WMD and ballistic missile programs. It concluded that Iraq did not pose a serious threat to world peace or U.S. security.  The Carnegie Foundation also said there was no solid evidence to back the U.S. officials? claims that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had ties with Al-Qaeda.  Bush lied to everyone but due to the arrogance of Americans, no one cares.  Might means right.  And Christians have the true religion.  Those Iraqis are just mud people with an inferior God.  And people wonder why peace on earth is so elusive.
• January 10, 2004  British troops and Iraqi police fired at armed, stone-throwing protesters, killing six people and wounding 11, when a crowd of Iraqis angry over the lack of jobs marched on coalition offices in this southern city, according to witnesses and officials.  I never understood Israeli soldiers shooting rock throwing Palestinian teenagers.
• January 10, 2004  Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and terrorists of Al Qaeda.  Yes, but that did not keep him from lying about it.  If he has no proof now, he had no proof then.
• January 10, 2004   Palestinians will seek to forge a single bi-national state with Israel if Israel carries out its threat to absorb chunks of the West Bank, says Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.  His comments underscored the Palestinians' sense of desperation in the face of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to impose a boundary stripping them of some of the land they want for a state if peacemaking remains frozen.  Israelis strongly oppose the scenario of a single state made up of Palestinians and Israelis, fearing that unless they separate from the Palestinians, Israel could end up ruling an area in which Jews would soon be a minority.  And that is the real motivator.  Israelis a minority in their own God given country.

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