Month: October 2009

the incredible andy worthington – thanx for cutting out the b.s. and saying it like it is: detainees are either prisoners of war (refer to the geneva conventions for how to treat them) or criminals (terrorism is a crime) who should be processed thru a court system. the special category of “enemy combatant” was invented by the bush admin to bypass all applicable laws. it should be made obsolete.

“The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit?” (Arundhati Roy) Full article.

This is an urgent call to activate all political and social emergency networks to organize support for the Honduran people and to further pressure the Obama Administration to withdraw immediately all its economic and military support to Honduras. Just last week, the Pentagon invited the Honduran military – under the control of the coup regime – to continue participating in training exercises with the United States. This is outrageous considering the Honduran military is principally responsible for the widespread human rights abuses taking place in the country since the coup was executed on June 28th. Furthermore, the State Department continues to provide USAID and other funding to NGOs and political parties backing the coup. All aid should be suspended and diplomatic relations and commercial ties should be immediately cut in order to suffocate the regime out of power. Full article.

“Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has a complete inspection regime conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It’s not been found to be in noncompliance. And yet, here we are condemning Iran for doing its job, declaring a facility, inviting inspectors in. And the conclusion it’s reached from this? That they’re producing nuclear weapons. This is politically motivated hype designed to create a situation this coming Thursday that will find the United States unable to reach any sort of agreement with Iran about its nuclear program.” Watch interview.

“What I think is beginning to be very clear now is that we see now that democracy is sort of fused to the free market, or to the idea of the free market. And so, its imagination has been limited to the idea of profit. And democracy, a few years ago, maybe, you know, even twenty-five years ago, was something that, let’s say, a country like America feared, which was why democracies were being toppled all over the place, like in Chile and so on. But now wars are being waged to restore—to place democracy, because democracy serves the free market, and each of the institutions in democracy, like you look at India, you know, whether it’s the Supreme—whether it’s the courts or whether it’s the media or whether it’s all the other institutions of democracy, they’ve been sort of hollowed out, and just their shells have been replaced, and we play out this charade. And it’s much more complicated for people to understand what’s going on, because there’s so much shadow play.” (Arundhati Roy) Watch interview.