Wednesday, September 03, 2003
-Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style Jensen and Mahajan)
Published on Monday, September 1, 2003 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
by Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
Now that American-British lies and distortions about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida links have been thoroughly exposed, Bush administration officials have had to create new rationalizations for the Iraq war.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late July that “military and rehabilitation efforts now under way in Iraq are an essential part of the war on terror. In fact, the battle to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terror.”
Last Tuesday, George W. Bush told the American Legion, “a democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East would be a further defeat for [the terrorist networks’] ideology of terror.”
And in early August, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice compared the U.S. mission in Iraq with the civil rights movement: “[W]e must never, ever indulge in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom ... or they just aren’t ready for freedom’s responsibilities. ... [That] view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad.” Rice implied that those opposing the U.S. occupation are the moral equivalent of white supremacists who thought black Americans incapable of citizenship. To critique the Iraq occupation is to stand in the schoolhouse door.
-A Change of Heart About Animals (Jeremy Rifkin)
Though much of big science has centered on breakthroughs in biotechnology, nanotechnology and more esoteric questions like the age of our universe, a quieter story has been unfolding behind the scenes in laboratories around the world — one whose effect on human perception and our understanding of life is likely to be profound.
What these researchers are finding is that many of our fellow creatures are more like us than we had ever imagined. They feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love — and these findings are changing how we view animals.
Strangely enough, some of the research sponsors are fast food purveyors, such as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC. Pressured by animal rights activists and by growing public support for the humane treatment of animals, these companies have financed research into, among other things, the emotional, mental and behavioral states of our fellow creatures.
Studies on pigs’ social behavior funded by McDonald’s at Purdue University, for example, have found that they crave affection and are easily depressed if isolated or denied playtime with each other. The lack of mental and physical stimuli can result in deterioration of health....
-Japan Treats refugees like Criminals
The plight of Kurdish refugees in Japan shows this country may well have the world’s stingiest policies on asylum seekers.
Of the hundreds of thousands of Kurds who have fanned out across the world over the last decade to escape repression and war, mainly from Turkey and Iraq, just 300 have managed to make it past Japanese immigration officials since 1998, and not one has been given asylum
-Japanese photo journalist’s exhibition opens people’s eyes to Iraq war
In countries which have joined the U.S. forces in the invasion of Iraq, many people had second thoughts about the Iraq war after they visited an exhibition of pictures taken by Japanese photo journalist Morizumi Takashi.
-Iraq -A Nuclear Polluted Land (Toyoda Naomi)
[Toyoda Naomi, the acclaimed photo-journalist,here documents the human face of the U.S.-British atomic attack on the Iraqi people that raised radiation levels to 4,000 times normal levels in some areas with devastating long term effects. The article, which appeared in Shukan Kinyobi, No. 468 (July 18, 2003) was accompanied by phototgraphs presenting important visual evidence of the findings.
-Other Sites we recommend
TokyoProgressive recommends the following sites for keeping up with what is happening in the world, including Japan:
TokyoProgressive ABC Links (incorporating Japan-Asia links)
